Kidney Stones: Medications

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Medications

Medicine you can buy without a prescription, such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs), may relieve your pain. Your doctor can give you stronger pain medicine if needed. NSAIDs include aspirin and ibuprofen (such as Motrin and Advil).

Your doctor may prescribe medicine to help your body pass the stone. Calcium channel blockers and alpha-blockers have been shown to help kidney stones pass more quickly with very few side effects.¹¹ Ask your doctor if one of these medicines can help you.

If you get more kidney stones despite drinking more fluids and making changes to your diet, your doctor may give you medicine to help dissolve your stones or to prevent new ones from forming. You may also receive prescription medicine if you have a disease that increases your risk of forming kidney stones. Which medicine you take depends on the type of stones you have.

Medication Choices

Medicine to prevent calcium stones

About 80% of kidney stones are calcium stones.¹ Calcium stones cannot be dissolved by changing your diet or taking medicines. There are medicines that may keep calcium stones from getting bigger or may prevent new calcium stones from forming:

• Thiazides (such as hydrochlorothiazide, chlorthalidone) and potassium citrate (Urocit-K) are commonly used to prevent calcium stones.
• Orthophosphate (Neutra-Phos) is sometimes used. It has more side effects than thiazides or potassium citrate.

Medicine to prevent uric acid stones

About 5% to 10% of kidney stones are made of uric acid, a waste product that normally exits the body in the urine.¹ Uric acid stones can sometimes be dissolved with medicine.

• Potassium citrate (Urocit-K) and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) prevent the urine from becoming too acidic, which helps prevent uric acid stones.
• Allopurinol (Lopurin, Zyloprim) makes it more difficult for your body to make uric acid.

Medicine to prevent cystine stones

Less than 1% of kidney stones are made of a chemical called cystine.¹ Cystine stones are more likely to occur in families with a disease that results in too much cystine in the urine (cystinuria).

• Potassium citrate (Urocit-K) prevents the urine from becoming too acidic, which helps prevent cystine kidney stones from forming.
• Penicillamine (Cuprimine, Depen), tiopronin (Thiola), and captopril (Capoten) all help keep cystine dissolved in the urine, which makes cystine-type kidney stones less likely to form.

Medicine to prevent struvite stones

About 10% to 15% of kidney stones are struvite stones.¹ They can also be called infection stones if they occur with kidney or urinary tract infections (UTIs). These types of kidney stones sometimes are also called staghorn calculi if they grow large enough.

• Urease inhibitors (Lithostat) are rarely used because of their side effects and poor results.

What To Think About

If you have uric acid stones or cystine stones and are taking medicine to prevent more stones from forming, you will most likely have to continue taking that medicine for the rest of your life.

Some struvite stones (staghorn calculi) form because of frequent kidney infections. If you have a struvite stone, you will most likely need antibiotics to cure the infection and help prevent new stones from forming, and you will most likely need surgery to remove the stone.

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Last updated:	May 30, 2007
Author:	Monica Rhodes
Reviewed By:	Adam Husney, MD - Family Medicine, Philip Belitsky, MD, FRCSC - Urology
Editors:	Kathleen M. Ariss, MS, Pat Truman