A Special Diet Found Effective Against Epilepsy In Children, Study

A University College London study that appears in the online edition of the Lancet Neurology found that “ketogenic” diet, a high fat, low carbohydrates and controlled protein diet, has efficacy in the management of children with drug-resistant epilepsy.

The study included 145 children, from age2 to 16, who suffered epileptic seizures per week , had not responded to epileptic drug treatments and had not previously been placed in the ketogenic diet. The children were divided into two groups. The first group , comprising seventy-three of the 145 children started the ketogenic diet immediately, while the other 72 started it after a 3 months delay and served as the control group during the study.

Results of the study showed more than 38 percent decline of seizures in the diet group, while an increased of 36.9 percent seizures in the control group was observed. Overall, the study found that 28 of the 54 kids who completed three months in the ketogenic diet had a greater than 50 percent reduction in epileptic seizures, compared to four of 49 children in the second and control group. Five kids in the diet group had 90% fewer seizures. None of the children in the control group experienced that kind of improvement, researchers reported.

Experts believe that the compounds called ketone bodies , the biomedical response to starvation from the diet of high fat, restricted carbohydrate, and controled protein intake, provides crucial source of brain energy, rather than sugar.