Kidney stones are a calcification that forms inside the kidney and are usually accompanied by severe pain and a trip to the emergency room. To better understand how they form, Dr. Thomas Chi of the University of California, San Francisco’s Department of Urology says they modeled kidney stones using fruit flies, which have regulatory organs similar to a human kidney.

"And after a couple of different experiments, where we tried to expose flies to different things, it turns out that zinc seems to be a very important factor for the formation of stones. And probably, it just doesn't stretch to one type of kidney stone, but potentially all types of kidney stones."

Zinc is important for the body’s health, so Chi says they are not encouraging people to cut back, but the study could lead to new treatments in the future.

"It might be a new way to think about how to develop new drugs or new surgical treatments or new therapies, to try to prevent kidney stones for patients in the future."