Pregnancy raises kidney stone risk

PREGNANCY increases the risk of painful kidney stones, research has found.

A study that reviewed the medical records of more than 2,800 female patients from 1984 to 2012 found pregnancy increases the risk of a first-time symptomatic kidney stone.

The risk peaks close to delivery and then improves by one year after delivery – although a modest risk of developing kidney stones continues for beyond a year after giving birth.

The study, published in the American Journal Of Kidney Diseases, included 945 women who experienced a first-time symptomatic kidney stone and 1,890 age-matched female control subjects.

The objective was to determine whether the risk of a first-time symptomatic kidney stone increased with pregnancy and if the risk varied across different time periods before, during and after pregnancy.

Study senior author Dr Andrew Rule, of the Mayo Clinic in the US, said: “We suspected the risk of a kidney stone event would be high during pregnancy, but we were surprised the risk remained high for up to a year after delivery. There also remains a slightly increased risk of a kidney stone event beyond a year after delivery.”