Clinical Signs, Causes, and Risk Factors of Pediatric Kidney Stone Disease: A Hospital-Based Case-Control Study

Nephrolithiasis in children is an important cause of morbidity worldwide. The current retrospective study aims at identifying epidemiological characteristics and risk factors of nephrolithiasis among children under 18 years old attending at nephrology clinic of Amir Kabir hospital of Arak, Iran, in 2014..
The current case-control study was conducted among 166 children in 2 equal groups of cases (with nephrolithiasis) and controls (without kidney stone). Clinical and paraclinical characteristics of children along with their sociodemographic and risk factors were collected. Data were analyzed by SPSS version 20 using Chi-square test and logistic regression analysis..
The current study showed that the most common symptoms of pediatric nephrolithiasis included fever (81.1%), urine discoloration (8.4%), pain (6%) and dysuria (3.6%). Urinary tract infection (42.2%) was the most common cause to seek medical care. The present study findings revealed series of predicative factors for nephrolithiasis including father’s occupation, growth retardation, type of nutrition during infancy, weight-for-age percentile, body mass index (BMI), and gestational age..
Findings of the current study, which require further consideration, identified common symptoms of nephrolithiasis in children. Future studies are greatly recommended to investigate risk factors of pediatric nephrolithiasis along with confounders in studies with a larger sample size..