Fig 1.
Rank order of weight-normalized elemental content in canine calcium oxalate-containing urinary stones.
(A) The content of 19 elements (n = 6–53) quantified from verified CaOx stones types from canine patients is summarized and ordered based on abundance. Each data point represents the average value of two replicate stone or stone fragments from a single canine (gray circle). Superimposed on the data points is the group median ± the interquartile range (middle and error bars). Detectable elements are listed in rank order based on group median. (B) The median ± range of elemental content from canine CaOx stones (black symbol and error bars) is superimposed on the median ± range of elemental content reported from 4 studies [23–26] of human CaOx stones (gray middle and error bars) following the same rank order.
Table 1.
Physiological characteristics of the dogs with urinary stones used in this study.
Table 2.
Association analysis of stone composition with characteristics of canines and stones.
Table 3.
Correlation matrix of element content within canine calcium oxalate-based urinary stones.
Fig 2.
Cluster analysis of elemental content within canine calcium oxalate-based urinary stones.
Weight-normalized values for each elemental group were log-transformed and normalized to the group mean before being entered into a hierarchical clustering model with correlation defined by a Euclidean distance function. Elemental groups with missing data were removed, leaving 10 elements for the analysis. The heatmap displays the relative divergence from the mean with increasing shades of red being higher and increasing shades of green being lower than mean value of the elemental group. The numbers on the side of the heatmap identify the specific canine stone sample, whereas the elemental category is described across the top of the heatmap. The dendrogram displays the different clades, with greater height of the branch points indicating greater differences between the leaves.