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The same lifestyle factors that are linked to healthy hearts and bones can also keep painful kidney stones at bay, a series of new studies suggests.
Researchers presenting data on Tuesday at the American Urological Association's annual meeting in Washington, D.C., contended that aspects such as diet, weight, calorie and calcium intake and medication usage can determine whether adults will develop kidney stones.
While the biggest risk factor for kidney stones is dehydration, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, this common condition can also be hereditary or caused by many other factors.
"Stone disease has been a problem since people have been around," said Dr. Marshall L. Stoller, who co-authored a study indicating women with higher calcium intakes were at reduced risk of the problem. "Only one disease is mentioned in the Hippocratic oath -- stone disease."
"Women should not lower their calcium intake in hopes of lowering their risk for calcium-based kidney stones," added Stoller, vice chair of the urology department at the University of California, San Francisco. "Those women who cut down their calcium increased their risk. It's sort of counterintuitive."
In addition to Stoller's study, other studies presented at the meeting suggested:

• Reducing daily calorie intake may significantly lower the risk for stone disease in overweight and obese people. Scientists from the University of California, San Francisco used data on 78,551 participants from the Women's Health Initiative study to examine diet, body mass index (BMI, a ratio of weight to height) and stone disease.
• Meat-heavy diets may be linked to a higher risk of developing kidney stones. Researchers from the University of Oxford, England, studied 50,617 people, finding that fresh fruit, fiber and certain minerals may reduce risk. No association was found with consumption of vegetables, calcium or vitamin C.
• Higher levels of antioxidants in the body may lead to a lower risk of stone formation. Researchers from the University of Iowa found that alpha-carotene, beta-carotene and beta-cryptoxanthin -- antioxidants found in legumes, nuts and grains -- were linked with lower numbers of kidney stones among 17,695 survey participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III).
• Statins, typically used to treat high cholesterol and triglyceride levels, were linked with a 50 percent reduction in stone disease among men and a 70 percent reduction among women, according to researchers. Scientists from the University of California, San Francisco, analyzed 57,320 patient records from a 10-year review of the Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application database, finding high cholesterol was linked with kidney stone formation and statins greatly lowered the risk.

"This has never been demonstrated before -- it's completely novel," said Dr. Roger Sur, author of the statin study and now director of the Comprehensive Kidney Stone Center at the University of California, San Diego. "It's a retrospective study, and it needs more rigorous prospective data. But it's certainly exciting information we hope to take forward."
With the link between lifestyle factors, heart disease and kidney stones so apparent, Stoller said, those who develop stones might want to consider if they are developing heart disease as well.

WASHINGTON -- Boosting "good" cholesterol does not protect against heart attacks and strokes, according to an eagerly awaited study that was abruptly stopped when the outcome became clear, officials said Thursday.
The federally funded study of more than 3,400 U.S. adults at high risk for heart attacks and strokes was halted 18 months early after researchers realized that the drug niacin failed to cut the risk -- as was hoped and suggested by many earlier, smaller studies, officials said. In fact, niacin appeared to increase study participants' risk for one particular type of stroke.
The findings are a major blow to what had been one of the most promising hopes for reducing the toll from cardiovascular disease, which kills about 800,000 Americans each year, making it the leading cause of death in the United States.
"Seeking new and improved ways to manage cholesterol levels is vital," Susan Shurin, acting director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which funded the $52.7 million study, said in a statement. "Although we did not see the expected clinical benefits, we have answered an important scientific question."
Heart attacks and strokes have been dropping, in part by cutting "bad" LDL cholesterol, which can clog arteries. Many researchers hoped that the next big advance would come from a new generation of drugs that boost "good" HDL cholesterol, which is thought to clear LDL. A large body of research had found that people with low HDL levels were more likely to be stricken by heart attacks and strokes.
Doubts about the HDL-hiking hypothesis began to emerge, however, when the HDL-raising drug fenofibrate failed in 2005 to cut heart attacks and strokes among diabetics. Another study the following year found a different HDL-raising drug, torcetrapib, actually increased the risk. But researchers held out hope that niacin might be beneficial.
To put that strategy to the first rigorous test, researchers launched the AIM-HIGH study involving 3,414 people with a history of heart disease. All were taking the statin Zocor to keep their LDL levels low but remained at high risk because they had low HDL and high triglycerides.
The subjects took either a high-dose, extended-release version of niacin known as Niaspan or a placebo. Some also took another cholesterol-lowering drug called Zetia. HDL levels rose and triglycerides dropped among those taking niacin, which is also known as vitamin B3. But an independent panel of experts monitoring the experiment terminated it April 25, after just 32 months of follow-up, when it concluded that those taking niacin were no less likely to have a heart attack or stroke.