Association and Discrimination of Urinary System Stone Disease Using Anthropometric Indices, Lifestyle Behaviors, and Artificial Intelligence: A Multicenter Case–Control Study
Mehmet Erhan Aydın, Coşkun Kaya, Aykut Aykaç, Kadir Yildirim, Mucahit Karaduman, Fatih Bicaklioglu, Yiğit Kudret Akyol, Bayram Kolcu, Mehmet Ezer, Ferhat Yakup Suceken, Hikmet Yasar, Muhammed Yildirim, Kemal SaricaBackground/Objectives: Urinary system stone disease is common and highly recurrent, and body mass index (BMI) poorly reflects the central adiposity linked to stone risk. We compared BMI with five next-generation anthropometric indices (A Body Shape Index [ABSI], Body Roundness Index [BRI], Waist-to-Height Ratio [WtHR], Conicity Index [ConI], Waist-to-Hip Ratio [WHR]) for their association with stone disease, and developed a hybrid autoencoder-based artificial intelligence model integrating anthropometric, clinical, and lifestyle data. Methods: This multicenter case–control study included 1195 participants (562 stone cases, 633 controls) from six centers in Turkey. Thirty-one variables were grouped into three subgroups (basic measurements, derived indices, clinical/lifestyle data), each processed by a separate autoencoder; combined features were classified with XGBoost, Cubic SVM, Fine KNN, and logistic regression. Each index’s independent association was assessed by quartile-based logistic regression, and discriminative power by ROC/AUC. Results: BMI showed no between-group difference (p = 0.919) or discriminative power (AUC = 0.498). ABSI, BRI, WtHR, ConI, and WHR were all significantly higher in the stone group, showed positive trends across quartiles after full adjustment (all p-trend ≤ 0.001), and outperformed BMI (AUC 0.547–0.564); associations were strongest for ConI (aOR = 2.62) and ABSI (aOR = 2.57). The hybrid AI model performed best with XGBoost (77% accuracy), followed by Fine KNN (71%), logistic regression (69%), and Cubic SVM (68%). Conclusions: Unlike BMI, next-generation indices reflecting central adiposity are independently and consistently associated with stone disease, and a multivariable AI model combining anthropometric, clinical, and lifestyle data reached 77% accuracy in separating stone patients from controls on a single test split. These findings are a hypothesis-generating risk-stratification signal that requires external validation, and they do not support clinical screening.