Global warming may increase incidents of kidney stones

"The main thing that protects you against kidney stones is the volume of urine you make, so the more urine you make by volume the less likely you are to make kidney stones," Morton explained.

"The hotter it is the more likely you are to sweat, and the lower urine volume you're going to have, so I presume that's the basis for what they're saying ... and it makes some inherent sense."

The research is one of the first examples of how global warming could have a direct effect on people's health, said Yair Lotan, who co-authored the study published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"As far as we know this is the first time that climate change has been linked to any human disease directly," Lotan said in an interview.

The report suggests the region known as the "kidney stone belt" in the southeast United States - which has elevated levels of stone occurrences - will expand with climate change.