The first epidemiology study of urolithiasis in New Brunswick

Abstract

Introduction: Understanding the compositions of a kidney stone is crucial in leading to proper treatment and in preventing reoccurring urolithiasis. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of urolithiasis in the province of New Brunswick (NB), Canada.
 Methods: A total of 3828 kidney stone analysis reports from October 1, 2016 to September 30, 2019, were reviewed from laboratory information systems. Among them, 3311 were identified as new cases. Stone compositions were analyzed by the Fourier Transform Infrared spectrometry. Incident rates were compared using Chi-squared analysis of different age, sex, and regional health authority (RHA) zones.
 Results: The prevalence of urolithiasis in NB was 147.8 per 100 000 person-years. Males had a significantly higher (X2=254, p<0.001) incident rate of 189 (95% confidence interval [CI] 182–198) than females (107 [95% CI 102–114]) per 100 000 person-years. Zone 1 had significantly higher (245 per 100 000 person-years, p<0.001) prevalence compared to other RHA zones. Age group over 65 years had the highest incidence rate of 253 per 100 00 person-years of all groups. The predominant kidney stone types in NB were whewellite (60.68%) and weddellite (11.58%). Those patients aged 0–18 years had a high percentage of struvite (4.32%) vs. the provincial average (2.19%) (p<0.001).
 Conclusions: The prevalence of NB’s urolithiasis is slightly higher than that of Ontario. Since both zones 1.1 and 1.2 have significantly high prevalence and are situated in the Moncton area (combined zone 1), it may suggest that geographical factors play a role in the prevalence of urolithiasis in NB.

Spectrum of Bacterial Pathogens from Urinary Infections Associated with Struvite and Metabolic Stones

“…In Japan, the frequency of struvite stones decreased from 1965 to 2005 in both men (from 7.5% to 1.4%) and women (from 23.3% to 5.1%) [24]; in Spain, it progressively decreased from 12.5% in 1979 to 9.8% in 1987 and to 6.7% in 1998 [25]; in Italy, it decreased from 24% in the period 1981-95 [26] to a rate ranging between 1.6 and 6.5% in the period 2003-2018 [27]; in Germany, the frequency decreased from 4.9% to 3.3% in males and from 13.5% to 9.2% in females between 1977 and 2006 [28]; in Australia, it decreased from 14% in the 1970s to 12% in the 1980s and to 7% in the period 2009-2011 [29]; and finally, in the United States, the frequency of struvite stones decreased from 7.8 to 3.0% between 1990 and 2010 in females whereas, in the same interval, it remained stable from 2.8 to 3.7 in males [30]. Other studies have confirmed a frequency of struvite calculi of less than 5% in most countries of the world [31][32][33][34][35]. In the other types of stones, Escherichia coli was the most frequent isolate (47.6%), followed by Gram-positive bacteria (14.0%) and Klebsiella spp.…”

Prevalence and trends of urolithiasis among adults

“…In Turkey, they found that urolithiasis had a crescent-shape distribution with more stones detected in coastal than inland areas; which can be explained by climate variations as inland had a higher average temperature than other regions [19]. Chen and Chen [15] reported a higher prevalence of urolithiasis in New Brunswick compared with studies conducted in other Canadian provinces. However, there are no head-to-head comparative studies between different provinces questioning the generalizability of such data.…”

“…Table 1 summarizes the findings of the studies that met our inclusion criteria. Twenty-three studies were identified reporting on urolithiasis epidemiology, prevalence, and trends from 11 different countries in the past 2 years [6 ▪▪ ,12,13 ▪ ,14 ▪ ,15,16 ▪▪ ,17,18 ▪ ,19–26,27 ▪ ,28–33].…”