Cystine Kidney Stones - Important Information You Should Know

Cystine kidney stones are unique because they are the part of the traits we inherited from the genes of our parents or from someone who carried such genes down to the family line.

What a person inherits is the poor ability to transport an amino acid product called cystine to different parts of the body. Hence, this situation often results to unabsorbed cystine that eventually attracts other insoluble substances to form into kidney stones.

Failure to transport cystine means, the receptors of cell membranes sometimes fail to recognize the molecules of cystine and carry them to other areas of the body. In fact, this type of defect in the transport system can also happen to molecules of other nutrients.

Studies show that such transport defect is the cause of other diseases. Thus, cystine becomes waste products and later forms into crystals as they combine with other insoluble substances, transforming them into cystine kidney stones.

Symptoms of Cystine Kidney Stones

They may come as small or larger, depending on the lifestyle of the person who inherited the transport defect. The sufferer may experience the following symptoms because of cystine kidney stones in his or her renal system:

• Hematuria or the presence of blood in the urine;

• Nagging pain as a result of the cystine stones that may be blocking the ureter;

• Renalcolic, this is a severe cramp like pain due to the presence of cystine stones in the urinary tract;

• Obstructive uropathy or the development of a urinary tract disease often leading to Urinary Tract Infection (UTI)

This type of kidney stone disorder should be diagnosed as early as possible to afford ease in treatment at its earliest stage. Cystine kidney stones that develop into a full-blown kidney disease called cystinuria can lead to grave illness and even death ; treatments in order to survive the cystinuria disease often require kidney dialysis or at worst kidney transplant.

Early Treatments of Cystinuria

As in all kidney stone problems, the foremost treatment the sufferer should adhere to is maintaining high levels of fluid intakes. Being aware of your proneness to developing cystine kidney stones will help you develop the habit of taking in large amounts of fluid. The more liquid intake the body gets, the more urine excretions take place to wash out the cystine crystals before they form into stones.

Cystine stone prone individuals should treat water not as sustenance but almost as a drug. Hence, the recommended amount of fluid that these individuals should supply their body is at least 5 to 7 liters a day to be ideal. Intakes must be placed at hourly intervals, which include night time.

Another prescribed treatment for cystinuria, wherein cystine stones are already present, is by alkalizing the patient’s urine. The ingestion of sodium bicarbonate is the most common method used to alkaline the urine. This kind treatment should be supervised by a doctor since an over ingestion of sodium bicarbonate may also lead to the formation of another type of kidney stone.

There are cases of cystinuria that can no longer be managed through high levels of fluid intakes. These are the cases where prescribed medical treatments will include a drug generically known as penicillamine. This drug is intended to make the cystine stones soluble, as it is a very potent drug.

If worse comes to worst, the only treatment left to remove cystine kidney stones for persons who have already achieved denseness in the quality of their cystine stones is by surgery. Hence, know all its early treatments if you are a person who comes from a family with a known history.

Remember, cystine kidney stones if left untreated will eventually lead to cystinuria and worse; you can save yourself all the troubles.