Mechanism of Calcium Oxalate Monohydrate Kidney Stones Formation: Layered Spherulitic Growth
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The morphology of calcium oxalate monohydrate (COM) kidney stones is studied using polarized light microscopy and X-ray diffraction. We show that polycrystalline structure of COM stones exhibits spherulitic texture where the arrangement of crystallites indicates that their fast growth direction is perpendicular to the corresponding radius of spherulite, resulting in the layered morphology. This is in contrast to “normal” spherulites, where the crystal growth process leads to the formation of a radiating array of fiber crystallites. We demonstrate that COM stones consist of spherulitic domains. The domains have the shape of comparatively narrow randomly distorted cones in which the crystallites form strong texture, so that their crystallographic axes have almost the same directions and the [100] crystallographic planes are nearly perpendicular to the radial direction of the domain. However, the order among the domains does not exist. Deviations of their radial directions from the corresponding radial directions of the whole stone are not large as a rule, while the other crystallographic directions of the domains are randomly distributed. A model of layered spherulitic growth explaining the observed morphology is proposed. The model suggests that every domain is formed by means of a continuous crystallization process periodically inhibited by precipitation of organic material so that alternating organic and polycrystalline layers appear. Fine crystalline channels remaining in organic layers connect neighboring crystalline layers and maintain, thereby, the coherence of crystal structure all over the domain. Preformed COM microcrystals occasionally adsorbed from urine on the surface of the growing organic layer serve as seeds for new spherulitic domains. The results are important for understanding the general principles of biomineralization, and spherulitic crystallization and could lead to the development of new strategies for preventing kidney stone formation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".