Cystine Kidney Stones

Cystine Kidney Stones can be prevented and indeed will dissolve slowly if there is obsessional attention to maintenance of a high fluid intake - 5 L of water must be drunk each 24 hours, and the patient must wake twice during the night to ingest 500 mL or more of water.

Many patients cannot tolerate this regimen. An alternative, though potentially more troublesome, option is the long-term use of the chelating agent penicillamine; this causes cystine to be converted to the more soluble penicillamine-cysteine complex.

Cause of Cystine Kidney Stones

This disease occurs in differing degrees of severity in people who have inherited either one or two abnormal genes. Humans have two copies of each gene. When both are abnormal, the condition is called homozygous for the disease. When one copy is normal and the other is abnormal, the condition is called heterozygous for the disease.

Symptom of Cystine Kidney Stones

The first symptom of a kidney stone usually is extreme pain. It may begin suddenly as a stone moves in the urinary tract, causing irritation or blockage. Typically, a person feels a sharp, cramping pain in the back and side around the area of the kidney, or in the lower abdomen. The pain may spread to the groin. Sometimes nausea and vomiting occur.

Side-effects include drug rashes, blood dyscrasias and immune complex-mediated glomerulonephritis and are by no means uncommon. In addition, the drug is expensive. It is, however, especially effective in promoting dissolution of cystine stones already present.

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Health Tip

Reduced carbon di oxide levels in the blood can be restored to normal by a slowly breathing into and out of a paper bag about 10 times and then breathing normally for 15 seconds untill the rapid breathing ceases.