The State of Kidney Stone Research

Hello, my name is Benji Canales.

I am a professor of urology at the University of Florida.

I have been involved in research

and academia for the last 20 years,

and I’m really excited to have this opportunity

to briefly share with you my thoughts on the state

of kidney stone disease research where we are

and what the Kidney Stone Collaborative really

wants to do in this area.

I think you may be on this website

as a healthcare professional.

Perhaps you have a family member or a friend,

or even yourself have had kidney stones

and you are interested in getting more data

on kidney stone disease itself.

You may have seen the statistics on the website

that talks about the billions of dollars

that are spent every year on kidney stone removal

procedures and prevention and emergency room visits.

But I think perhaps this is the most telling statistic.

So this graph is the it discusses the prevalence

of kidney stone disease in the United States

that you can see here at the bottom,

starting from 1980.

So roughly about 40 years ago the prevalence

or the number of individuals in the United States

with kidney stones was around 3.2% with the

men in blue, the women in pink.

And over the years this percentage rose

in the nineties, it was around 5%.

In 2010, it was 8.8%.

And then by 2014 10%

or one out of 10 Americans would be diagnosed

with a kidney stone sometime in their lifetime.

The first thing I think that strikes you about this,

not only is the rise in the prevalence,

but also that decrease in those bars, the bar of the blue,

the blue bar, and the pink bar with men and women.

And the other thing I think that’s important

to understand about kidney stones is they affect all ages,

all genders, all walks of life, from neonates to kids,

to teenagers, to young adults, to the elderly.

and this I really feel like this more than any statistic, speaks

to the extreme need to identify new treatments

for this condition, uh, due to this rising prevalence

of kidney stones in the United States.

So you’re saying, okay, canals, I understand

that kidney stone disease is important, that billions

of dollars are spent on treating it.

Why should I support this?

What I’ve broken down is kidney stone disease

research into categories

and trying to simplify it in that way.

So we’ll start with clinical research.

I think this is something that most people

understand what it is.

Rhis allows physicians to determine how best to

treat their patients and

to decide if a new treatment might be better than our

current therapies.

Since most kidney stone research revolves

around development of new devices and instruments

or technology you can imagine that this is really

where clinical research is focused.

There’s also almost a million kidney stone procedures performed every

year in the United States.

So this is kind of what we focus on.

Surgical technology, better scopes

is one scope better than another

or better devices, baskets, lasers

or maybe even therapies

that might prevent kidney stones.

Basic science research is the next big category.

This involves really understanding the science

behind the events that lead up

to kidney stone’s disease.

This would focus on things like genetics.

I’ve shown a little chromosome with some DNA here

the early stages of formation of like

something like crystals or maybe even discovery science.

So models that lead to better understanding of kidney stone

treatment and prevention.

And then finally, the last big research category is epidemiologic or population research.

This looks more at behavioral factors.

So maybe what you’re eating, what you’re drinking

societal factors or even environmental factors,

so your socioeconomic status, other

medical conditions that might affect kidney stone disease.

And these are the big areas that the

Kidney Stone Collaborative really wants

to focus on funding.

So I’ve put down a few kidney stone disease foundations,

here as well as their their logos, the A SN,

the A UA, the National Kidney Foundation.

I put these here just to show there.

There are a number of foundations that

support kidney stone research,

but there’s not a single

not-for-profit foundation in the world that’s

devoted strictly to kidney stone disease research.

And that’s really why this foundation was created.

Your donation will support physicians

and researchers who have a passion

for making new discoveries, developing new therapies,

and connecting different stone advocacy groups together

through these supportive networks, all for the good

of kidney stone formers.

So thank you very much for your support

of this incredibly important cause.

I hope you found this helpful.