Kidney stones are very common – and painful – in men. About 3 in 20 men (1 in 20 women) in developed countries develop them at some stage. Mice, however, rarely suffer though the precise reasons are unknown. Jeffrey S. Clark and colleagues, writing in The Journal of Physiology, have come up with some answers.
Kidney stones are crystalline deposits of various chemicals that should normally be excreted in the urine, particularly oxalate. Common in food, it is usually disposed of by the gut into the faeces by exchanging it for chloride. If there is little chloride available, in a low-salt diet for example, oxalate may be retained by the intestine to eventually be excreted by the kidneys, where the stones may form.
Mice, unlike men, do not spontaneously develop kidney stones, making it difficult to set up an animal model of this common disease. Now, some reasons for this difference between mice and men may have emerged.