Giving children with epilepsy a special low carb diet reduces the number of seizures they experience by 75% compared with children on a normal diet, according to a study carried out at Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Previous studies have suggested that the food regime, which is similar to the Atkins diet, is effective at curbing epilepsy but this is the first gold standard clinical trial to prove that it works.
"When she went on the diet within days she was just so much calmer," said Rachel Farrand of Redhill, Surrey, whose six-year-old daughter, Ella Strutton, was part of the trial. "It's just had a really big impact on her behaviour and her learning."
Ella developed epilepsy after contracting meningitis when she was one. She is now profoundly deaf, has severe learning difficulties and before taking part in the trial she was suffering up to 12 seizures a day. "It made it very hard for her to learn because she couldn't concentrate at all," said Farrand. "She was a complete and absolute whirlwind. She couldn't settle for anything even for a minute." After starting the diet she was seizure-free for six months and now no longer needs to take anti-epilepsy medication.
About one in 200 children are affected by epilepsy, which can often be controlled with regular drugs.
Professor Helen Cross at the Institute of Child Health at University College London and her colleagues recruited 145 children - including Ella - aged between two and 16 who all had severe epilepsy. Half were randomly assigned to a ketogenic diet, which involves eating no carbohydrate and no more than the minimum dietary requirement of protein. Fat is permitted. The other half ate a normal diet. Forty-two children were not included in the final analysis for a variety of reasons.
The team found that the number of seizures per day in the ketogenic diet group dropped to 62% of the level before the change, while the control group's seizures increased by 37%. Twenty-eight children in the diet group had a more than 50% reduction in their seizures compared with four in the control group. The results are reported in the journal Lancet Neurology. Cross said it was important to have confirmed that the ketogenic diet is effective by the gold standard scientific method. "At the present time it is a treatment that is really reserved for the really intractable. It's available in only a minimal number of centres," she said.
She added that parents should only consider trying the diet after consultation with a doctor and dietician. "Children are growing and need the right number of calories... so it does need to be monitored and calculated individually," she said.
As yet, scientists are unsure what changes occur with the diet, although it is possible that it prompts a physiological shift that affects the brain. "There's all sorts of theories from a basic science point of view that have been put forward, but we haven't got the exact reason why it works," said Cross.
The study is important because it is the first time the question of whether the diet works has been tackled using a randomised clinically controlled trial - widely acknowledged as the best method for assessing whether medical interventions are effective.
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Health | Diet | Children | Kids | Carb Diet | Epileptic Fits | Meningitis | Drugs | Protein | Fat
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