Endocrine Abstracts

Background-Aim: Urolithiasis is a frequent and recurrent pathology. Diabetes has a very important role in the formation of kidney stones. The objective of our study was to study the influence of age on the morpho-constitutional characteristics of urolithiasis in diabetic patients in southern Tunisia.

Methods: This is a mono-centric retrospective and descriptive study of urinary lithiasis cases in diabetic patients. The lithiasis were identified by the morpho-constitutional study, they were collected in the Laboratory of biochemistry, during the period from January 2011 to December 2020. We were interested in diabetic patients over the age of 18. To study the influence of age, we subdivided our diabetic lithiasis patients into 2 groups: Group1 (G1): group of diabetic lithiasis patients with an age less than 59 years. Group 2 (G2): group of diabetic lithiasis patients having an age more than or equal to 60 years.

Results: Our study involved 76 stones which represents 7.08% of all urinary stones analyzed during the study period. Our patients were aged from 33 to 85 years. Sex ratio=2.16. Nephritic colic was the most common discovery circumstance (44.8% for G1and 61.3% for G2). Renal localization was the most frequent (58.6% for G1 and 58.1% for G2) followed by the ureter(37.9% for G1and 29% for G2). The notion of recurrence was present in 31% of G1 patients and 38.7%of G2 patients. The constitutional study of the calculi showed that oxalocalcic lithiasis was the major component of the calculi for the two groups:the C1 monohydrate type was the most frequent in 36.7% and 42.9% of the cases (respectively for G1 and G2), followed by the mixed type (C1+C2):10% and 14.3% (respectively for G1 and G2) and the dihydrate type C2 (3.3 and 3.6% respectively for G1 and G2). Purine lithiasis represented by pure purines (6.7% and 25% respectively for G1 and G2) and mixed purines (23.3% and 14.3% respectively for G1 and G2), followed by phosphocalcium lithiasis (20% for G1and no patient for G2). The difference by age was not significant for the different stone types.

Conclusions: The influence of age on the morpho-constitutional characteristics of urolithiasis in diabetic patients in southern Tunisia were comparable to those reported in many countries. The modifications are generally due to the expression of nutritional disorders and metabolic modifications linked to cellular aging