1. The possible roles of the diet and of intestinal absorption in the increased excretion of oxalate by patients with renal calcium stones have been studied.
2. Dietary surveys showed that the mean daily intake of oxalic acid by stone-formers was not significantly different from that of non-stone-formers.
3. The mean urinary excretion of oxalate, expressed as an oxalate/creatinine molar ratio, was significantly reduced by fasting, the change being more marked in the stone-formers than in the normal subjects. Moreover, fasting abolished the difference in mean oxalate/creatinine ratios between stone-formers and control subjects.
4. These results are compatible with the hypothesis that the small increases in urinary oxalate excretion which occur in some idiopathic calcium oxalate stone-formers are due to increased absorption of oxalate from the intestine, which may be due to a reduction in intraluminal calcium concentration.
