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Effect of Sodium or Potassium on Ovine Urinary Calculi

U. S. Department of Agriculture and Texas A&M University, College Station¹

Abstract

In three separate feeding tests potassium salts were found to be more effective than the corresponding sodium salt in controlling or reducing the incidence of urinary calculi in weanling wether lambs, when added to a known calculogenic diet. Only sodium carbonate was as effective as the corresponding potassium salt in controlling the incidence of urinary calculi. When disodium phosphate was added at the level of 1% of the diet, a highly significant increase in incidence resulted, while dipotassium phosphate added at the same level produced a nonsignificant increase. The increase in incidence with disodium phosphate was significantly (P<.05) greater than the increase when dipotassium phosphate was used. Isomolar supplements equivalent to the sodium in 1% sodium chloride resulted in a nonsignificant increase in the incidence of calculi for both dipotassium and disodium phosphates. The increase in incidence for disodium phosphate was less than in the previous experiment, but it did not represent any change in significance for dipotassium phosphate.

While both 1% sodium chloride and potassium chloride reduced the incidence of urolithiasis, only the reduction with potassium chloride was significant (P<.0S). Isomolar amounts of the respective chlorides resulted in an increase with sodium chloride, while a reduction was observed with potassium chloride.

Sodium bicarbonate produced a nonsignificant increase in the incidence of urinary calculi, while potassium bicarbonate produced a highly significant (P<.01) decrease. The addition of sodium or potassium carbonate decreased the incidence of urinary calculi. Much the same pattern was found for death losses alone. There were fewer death losses with sodium carbonate than with potassium carbonate.

In all experiments a longer time was required for clinical cases to develop in the lambs receiving a potassium supplement. On a quantal basis of the presence or absence of uroliths, potassium afforded better protection against the occurrence of urinary calculi than sodium. The degree of protection was dependent upon the anion or chemical radical associated with the potassium cation.

¹ Animal Husbandry Research Division, Agricultural Research Service, U.S.D.A., and Departments of Biochemistry and Biophysics and of Animal Science, Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, College Station, Texas.