To print: Select File and then Print from your browser's menu --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: High-Fat Ketogenic Diet Lowers Cholesterol in Children With Epilepsy URL: http://www.pslgroup.com/dg/22A0BA.htm Doctor's Guide August 27, 2008
BALTIMORE, Md -- August 27, 2008 -- Elevated cholesterol levels return to normal or near-normal levels over time in 4 out of 10 children with uncontrollable epilepsy treated with the high-fat ketogenic diet, according to a study published early online and in an upcoming issue of Journal of Child Neurology. Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, Maryland, conducted a 4-year study that followed 121 epileptic children with intractable seizures on the high-fat, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet designed to control such seizures. While most children developed high cholesterol after starting the diet, cholesterol gradually improved in nearly half of them, returning to normal or near-normal levels with or without modifications to their diet to reduce fat intake. Diet modifications including reducing total fat content or saturated fats and adding nutritional supplements reduced high cholesterol just as much as doing nothing. Researchers prescribed dietary modifications to increase polyunsaturated fats in the diets of 15 children with elevated cholesterol. Dietary modifications decreased cholesterol by 20% in 9 out of the 15 (60%) children whose diets were modified. Surprisingly, cholesterol also dropped by at least 20% in 41% of the 37 children whose diets remained unchanged. The findings, while encouraging overall, also mean that relying on diet changes alone may not do much for those children in whom cholesterol remains persistently elevated and that new approaches for these patients are needed, according to the authors. The findings should come as comforting news to paediatric neurologists, general paediatricians, and parents of children treated with the ketogenic diet and should reassure them that, in most patients, increases in cholesterol may be short-lived, researchers say. "We are greatly encouraged by our findings because nearly half of the children on the diet were either able to maintain healthy cholesterol or gradually metabolised the extra fat and returned to somewhat normal cholesterol levels," said senior investigator Eric Kossoff, MD, John Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland. "This means the benefits of the diet -- a diet that is lifesaving in many children and therapeutic in most of them -- continue to outweigh the risks." Noting that 40% of children maintained normal cholesterol even after starting the diet, researchers found that children fed a formula-based, liquid-only ketogenic diet were nearly 3 times less likely to develop high cholesterol. Researchers attribute this finding to the nearly zero fat content in commonly used ketogenic diet formulas. In the group with normal cholesterol, 78% of children (31/40) were fed a formula-based ketogenic diet. This finding, while requiring further study, points to another possible treatment for high cholesterol, Dr. Kossoff says, by switching children with persistently elevated cholesterol to formula-based ketogenic diets at least some of the time. SOURCE: Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 1999 P\S\L Consulting Group Inc. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of P\S\L content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of P\S\L. P\S\L shall not be liable for any errors, omissions or delays in this content or any other content on its sites, newsletters or other publications, nor for any decisions or actions taken in reliance on such content. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This news story was printed from *Doctor's Guide to the Internet* located at http://www.docguide.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Return to News Story Page This site is maintained by webmaster@pslgroup.com Please contact us with any comments, problems or bugs. All contents Copyright (c) 1998 P\S\L Consulting Group Inc. All rights reserved.