UC Science Today

Despite the rising prevalence of kidney stones in the U.S. over the past three decades, there hasn’t been much drug development to help prevent them. Dr. Thomas Chi of the University of California, San Francisco’s Department of Urology says while there haven’t been many successful treatment options, new surgical strategies have done amazingly well.

"It used to be that you'd have to have a giant open surgery, to open the kidney in order to get the stones out, and you'd lose a lot of kidneys that way, and a lot of blood loss. Nowadays, we have lots of minimally invasive options, most of those we specialize here at UCSF, and that includes shockwave therapy, small cameras that go into the kidney to use lasers to break up stones. And for really large stones, we can just make a small incision about a dime-size in your back, to go in and grind up stones. So the days of open surgery are pretty much over nowadays."

Chi is working to better understand how stones form, which he hopes will lead to new drug therapies in the future.

"So, we’re doing pretty good on the surgery front, but we really want to prevent people from getting stones in the first place."

Despite the rising prevalence of kidney stones in the U.S. over the past three decades, there hasn’t been much drug development to help prevent them. Dr. Thomas Chi of the University of California, San Francisco’s Department of Urology says while there haven’t been many successful treatment options, new surgical strategies have done amazingly well.

"It used to be that you'd have to have a giant open surgery, to open the kidney in order to get the stones out, and you'd lose a lot of kidneys that way, and a lot of blood loss. Nowadays, we have lots of minimally invasive options, most of those we specialize here at UCSF, and that includes shockwave therapy, small cameras that go into the kidney to use lasers to break up stones. And for really large stones, we can just make a small incision about a dime-size in your back, to go in and grind up stones. So the days of open surgery are pretty much over nowadays."

Chi is working to better understand how stones form, which he hopes will lead to new drug therapies in the future.

"So, we’re doing pretty good on the surgery front, but we really want to prevent people from getting stones in the first place."

Despite the rising prevalence of kidney stones in the U.S. over the past three decades, there hasn’t been much drug development to help prevent them. Dr. Thomas Chi of the University of California, San Francisco’s Department of Urology says while there haven’t been many successful treatment options, new surgical strategies have done amazingly well.

"It used to be that you'd have to have a giant open surgery, to open the kidney in order to get the stones out, and you'd lose a lot of kidneys that way, and a lot of blood loss. Nowadays, we have lots of minimally invasive options, most of those we specialize here at UCSF, and that includes shockwave therapy, small cameras that go into the kidney to use lasers to break up stones. And for really large stones, we can just make a small incision about a dime-size in your back, to go in and grind up stones. So the days of open surgery are pretty much over nowadays."

Chi is working to better understand how stones form, which he hopes will lead to new drug therapies in the future.

"So, we’re doing pretty good on the surgery front, but we really want to prevent people from getting stones in the first place."

As California faces its fourth year of record-breaking drought, many communities are finding ways to cut back to meet the state’s mandatory water use reductions. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology professor Peter Bowler of the University of California, Irvine says their campus has been doing its part by converting to drought-tolerant landscaping, or xeriscaping.

"The whole campus is going xeriscape. We’re deep into getting away from turf and using plants that preferably are native but at least use little water. We have a lot of drought-resistant vegetation. These plants become dormant during the dry seasons."

Bowler also directs the campus’s Aboretum, a facility for rare and native plant species. His team has had the challenge of balancing water reduction and preserving these endangered plants.

"We have an obligation to preserve and sustain these state-owned plants, but at the same time we’re doing our very best to keep water usage at an absolute minimum."

As California faces its fourth year of record-breaking drought, many communities are finding ways to cut back to meet the state’s mandatory water use reductions. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology professor Peter Bowler of the University of California, Irvine says their campus has been doing its part by converting to drought-tolerant landscaping, or xeriscaping.

"The whole campus is going xeriscape. We’re deep into getting away from turf and using plants that preferably are native but at least use little water. We have a lot of drought-resistant vegetation. These plants become dormant during the dry seasons."

Bowler also directs the campus’s Aboretum, a facility for rare and native plant species. His team has had the challenge of balancing water reduction and preserving these endangered plants.

"We have an obligation to preserve and sustain these state-owned plants, but at the same time we’re doing our very best to keep water usage at an absolute minimum."

As California faces its fourth year of record-breaking drought, many communities are finding ways to cut back to meet the state’s mandatory water use reductions. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology professor Peter Bowler of the University of California, Irvine says their campus has been doing its part by converting to drought-tolerant landscaping, or xeriscaping.

"The whole campus is going xeriscape. We’re deep into getting away from turf and using plants that preferably are native but at least use little water. We have a lot of drought-resistant vegetation. These plants become dormant during the dry seasons."

Bowler also directs the campus’s Aboretum, a facility for rare and native plant species. His team has had the challenge of balancing water reduction and preserving these endangered plants.

"We have an obligation to preserve and sustain these state-owned plants, but at the same time we’re doing our very best to keep water usage at an absolute minimum."

As California faces its fourth year of record-breaking drought, many communities are finding ways to cut back to meet the state’s mandatory water use reductions. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology professor Peter Bowler of the University of California, Irvine says their campus has been doing its part by converting to drought-tolerant landscaping, or xeriscaping.

"The whole campus is going xeriscape. We’re deep into getting away from turf and using plants that preferably are native but at least use little water. We have a lot of drought-resistant vegetation. These plants become dormant during the dry seasons."

Bowler also directs the campus’s Aboretum, a facility for rare and native plant species. His team has had the challenge of balancing water reduction and preserving these endangered plants.

"We have an obligation to preserve and sustain these state-owned plants, but at the same time we’re doing our very best to keep water usage at an absolute minimum."

A good night’s rest could be the body’s best defense against the buildup of beta-amyloid, a toxic protein linked to Alzheimer’s disease. In a new study led by the University of California, Berkeley, researchers found that participants who had better quality sleep were able to retain more memories and had fewer deposits of beta-amyloid. Co-author Bryce Mander says that the findings add a preventative measure in a field where treatments have been largely unsuccessful.

"And one of the hypotheses from that is that well, amyloid has already ravaged the brain it's already triggered this degeneration. The neurons are already gone. So if you remove it, you know it's kind of like clearing the rubble after an earthquake, the damage has been done. But if you could do something before that maybe enhance the structural integrity of your roads or buildings so they don't break as much in an earthquake, the same for sleep. If you make the brain healthier, you promote the transformation of memories to be more permanent. You kind of help the structural integrity of the brain by enhancing sleep, then maybe the pathology would not be as successful at ravaging the brain."

A good night’s rest could be the body’s best defense against the buildup of beta-amyloid, a toxic protein linked to Alzheimer’s disease. In a new study led by the University of California, Berkeley, researchers found that participants who had better quality sleep were able to retain more memories and had fewer deposits of beta-amyloid. Co-author Bryce Mander says that the findings add a preventative measure in a field where treatments have been largely unsuccessful.

"And one of the hypotheses from that is that well, amyloid has already ravaged the brain it's already triggered this degeneration. The neurons are already gone. So if you remove it, you know it's kind of like clearing the rubble after an earthquake, the damage has been done. But if you could do something before that maybe enhance the structural integrity of your roads or buildings so they don't break as much in an earthquake, the same for sleep. If you make the brain healthier, you promote the transformation of memories to be more permanent. You kind of help the structural integrity of the brain by enhancing sleep, then maybe the pathology would not be as successful at ravaging the brain."

A good night’s rest could be the body’s best defense against the buildup of beta-amyloid, a toxic protein linked to Alzheimer’s disease. In a new study led by the University of California, Berkeley, researchers found that participants who had better quality sleep were able to retain more memories and had fewer deposits of beta-amyloid. Co-author Bryce Mander says that the findings add a preventative measure in a field where treatments have been largely unsuccessful.

"And one of the hypotheses from that is that well, amyloid has already ravaged the brain it's already triggered this degeneration. The neurons are already gone. So if you remove it, you know it's kind of like clearing the rubble after an earthquake, the damage has been done. But if you could do something before that maybe enhance the structural integrity of your roads or buildings so they don't break as much in an earthquake, the same for sleep. If you make the brain healthier, you promote the transformation of memories to be more permanent. You kind of help the structural integrity of the brain by enhancing sleep, then maybe the pathology would not be as successful at ravaging the brain."