While rarely harmful, kidney stones can cause debilitating sleep-depriving, doubled-over pain after they leave the organ for which they are named and start their journey through the body before an eventual exit.
And that’s if they are small enough to make their way.
Larger stones can require medical intervention.
This is usually done via blasting the stones with sound waves to break them up into fragments that won’t get stuck or make excruciatingly sluggish progress through the ureter, the narrow tube connecting kidney to bladder.
Another problem is that once a patient has had a stone, there is a strong likelihood of recurrence within a few years.
Research done by University of North Carolina academics in the United States and published by the American College of Physicians (ACP) on March 23 (2026), suggests that recurrence can be made less likely by drinking more water, and reducing salt and protein intake.
The team recommended medications such as thiazide diuretics, alkali therapy and allopurinol, saying these “may be helpful”, as could diets with “normal to high calcium” intake.
The ACP paper comes after the British medical journal The Lancet published research by Duke University School of Medicine in the US on whether an effective “hydration strategy” could be crucial to prevention.
Sticking to such advice is not as straightforward as it sounds, the Duke team said, concluding earlier in March that a “behavioural intervention programme to promote fluid intake for secondary stone prevention did not reduce recurrent stone events”.
Instead, the team reported “modestly increased urine volume” among participants during a two-year follow-up period.
“The trial results show that despite the importance of high fluid intake to prevent stone recurrence, achieving and maintaining very high fluid intake is more challenging than we often assume for people with urinary stone disease,” said Duke urologist Dr Charles Scales.
In another The Lancet paper, researchers at the University of Wollongong in Australia and the Lebanese American University in Lebanon warned that when it comes to recommending high fluid intake to combat the stones, “patients frequently report practical, behavioural and environmental barriers that hinder sustained behaviour change”.
“Evidence regarding strategies to support long-term adherence have [sic] been scarce,” the scientists said.
There could be some good news for sufferers of kidney stones, however, with the development by Singapore-based researchers and medical students of a device described as using irrigation fluid “to create a continuous suction flow, effectively flushing out multiple stone fragments during the procedure”.
Called BiPass, the prototype has been put forward for clinical validation in the city-state after winning a SGD50,000 (RM154,783) prize backed by US-based medical devices giant Becton Dickinson and Japan-based peer Terumo Asia.
“By removing fragments more quickly and thoroughly, we can reduce the need for repeat or invasive interventions, helping patients recover faster and with less disruption to their lives,” said Duke-NUS Medical School medical student Danny Lo, who led the team. – dpa
