Race and Sex Related Differences in Nephrolithiasis Risk among Blacks and Whites in the Southern Community Cohort Study

Recent studies have shown that kidney stone disease prevalence in the United States has risen over the last 3 decades, but specifically among blacks there has a dramatic increase in prevalence. Despite this, stone epidemiology among blacks is understudied, and it remains unclear how the role of sex differs among whites and blacks in the context of kidney stone risk. To address these questions, this study sought to estimate incidence rates of kidney stones and evaluate race-sex associations with risk in a large prospective cohort of white and black men and women in the southeastern United States.

This study found white males had the highest risk for incident stone disease compared to white females and blacks overall, while there was no difference in risk observed between black men and women. In other words, the association of incident kidney stone risk with male sex varies by race. This challenges some of the prior studies that have reported higher rates of stone disease among black women than black men. The discrepancy of association of incident kidney stone risk with sex and race warrants further investigation of the sex disparity among whites and why this is not observed among blacks.

Written by: Ryan Hsi, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Urologic Surgery, Vanderbilt University Medical Center

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