Symptomatic gallstones: a disease of young Saudi women.

This is a study performed to identify the risk factors for gallstones in Saudis, taking the patient population of King Khalid University Hospital as a sample. Only Saudis with symptomatic gallstones were studied, the parameters being age, sex, weight, body mass index, fertility, age at menarche and age at marriage. The results showed that sex, weight, body mass index and fertility all appeared to be important factors in the development of gallstones and that the condition affects more Saudi females and at a younger age than reported in the literature, probably due to overweight and factors related to reproductivity. We conclude that gallstones are common in Saudi women and affect them at a younger age than western women, weight and fertility appear to be important risk factors.