Causal pathways in kidney stone disease
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Molecular studies of kidney tissue to reveal causal pathways in kidney stone disease
IRAS ID
350861
Contact name
Sarah Howles
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford/Research Governance, Ethics and Assurance team
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 13 days
Research summary
Kidney stones are common and are related to pain, kidney infections, and kidney failure. Around 10-20% of people will have kidney stones over the course of their life and at any time around 5% of people will have one or more stones in their kidneys. We do not have a good understanding of the processes that lead to kidney stone formation and do not have effective treatments to stop kidney stones forming. To gain a better understanding of the causes of kidney stone disease and to improve treatments we need access to kidney tissue from people who have kidney stones and normal kidney tissue to compare this to.
An operation to remove a kidney, which is called a nephrectomy, most commonly takes place to treat kidney cancer but can be undertaken for non-cancer reasons, including severe kidney stone disease. We would like to study kidney tissue from individuals who have a kidney stone in their kidney at the time of their nephrectomy. We want to compare this tissue to that from people who do not have kidney stones.
We will approach people who have had a nephrectomy or are due to have a nephrectomy to ask their permission to use kidney tissue that is not needed for their diagnosis for this research. We will use their kidney specimens to study the cellular processes that lead to kidney stone formation to develop better treatments for kidney stone disease.
REC name
East of Scotland Research Ethics Service REC 2
REC reference
25/ES/0062
Date of REC Opinion
6 Aug 2025
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion