Journal
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Volume 8, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-31890-9
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Funding
- Mayo Clinic
- Mayo Clinic O'Brien Urology Research Center [DK100227]
- Mayo Special Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF)
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Astrobiology Institute through the Science Mission Directorate [NNA13AA91A]
- University of Illinois Strategic Alliance for Technology-Based Healthcare
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More than 10% of the global human population is now afflicted with kidney stones, which are commonly associated with other significant health problems including diabetes, hypertension and obesity. Nearly 70% of these stones are primarily composed of calcium oxalate, a mineral previously assumed to be effectively insoluble within the kidney. This has limited currently available treatment options to painful passage and/or invasive surgical procedures. We analyze kidney stone thin sections with a combination of optical techniques, which include bright field, polarization, confocal and superresolution nanometer-scale auto-fluorescence microscopy. Here we demonstrate using interdisciplinary geology and biology (geobiology) approaches that calcium oxalate stones undergo multiple events of dissolution as they crystallize and grow within the kidney. These observations open a fundamentally new paradigm for clinical approaches that include in vivo stone dissolution and identify high-frequency layering of organic matter and minerals as a template for biomineralization in natural and engineered settings.
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