The role of the microbiome for the onset of urinary stone disease (USD) has received considerable attention in recent years, with numerous clinical metagenome-wide association studies (MWAS) published since 2016. While these studies have shown some significant associations between the microbiome and USD, details concerning the broader clinical associations with the microbiome, such as for sex or age, along with the specific bacteria responsible for associations have been inconsistent. In fact, the primary factor driving the results in each of the studies appeared to be the location where the study was conducted, which suggests the possibility that study-specific technical differences in the way samples were collected, stored, or processed, impacted the resulting microbiome data.