Prevalence of osteoporosis in patients with nephrolithiasis and vice versa: a cumulative analysis

Purpose: Nephrolithiasis is thought to be a risk factor for osteoporosis, but data assessing if osteoporosis predisposes to the risk of nephrolithiasis are lacking. The present study aims to investigate whether patients with nephrolithiasis have a prominently higher prevalence of osteoporosis than the controls and vice versa via a cumulative analysis. Methods: Four databases were used to detect the eligible studies. We calculated the relative risk (RR) with a 95% confidence interval (CI) to assess the combined effect. The methodologies for conducting this study followed the PRISMA guidelines and were registered in the PROSPERO (ID: CRD42023395875), Results: Nine case-control or cohort studies with a total of 454,464 participants were finally included. Combined results indicated that there was a significantly higher prevalence of osteoporosis in patients with nephrolithiasis as compared to the general population without nephrolithiasis (overall RR from six studies=1.204, 95%CI: 1.133 to 1.28, P<0.001; heterogeneity: I-2 = 34.8%, P=0.162). Conversely, osteoporosis was significantly correlated to an increased risk of nephrolithiasis as compared to the controls without osteoporosis (overall RR from four studies=1.505, 95%CI: 1.309 to 1.731, P<0.001; I-2 = 89.8%, P<0.001). Sensitivity analysis on the two categories validated the above findings. No significant publication bias was identified in this study. Conclusions: The present study highlighted a significantly high prevalence of osteoporosis in patients with nephrolithiasis and vice versa. This reciprocal association reminded the clinicians to conduct a regular follow-up assessment when managing patients with nephrolithiasis or osteoporosis, especially for the elderly. Systematic review registration: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/#searchadvanced, identifier CRD42023395875.

Automated summary

This study aimed to investigate the association between nephrolithiasis and osteoporosis. The results showed a significantly higher prevalence of osteoporosis in patients with nephrolithiasis and a higher risk of nephrolithiasis in individuals with osteoporosis.