Keto Diet Helped Some Babies With Spasms
⚠️ Infant dosing/safety: medication and diet decisions for infants require individualized medical guidance.
Source: frontiersin.org
Summary
This study looked at the ketogenic diet, a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet, in 74 children with infantile epileptic spasms syndrome (IESS). All children were treated at one hospital in China and were followed for 3, 6, and 12 months after starting the diet. The researchers tracked how often seizures happened, how many children stayed on the diet, and what side effects occurred.
The results showed that some children had fewer seizures after starting the diet. About 57% had a seizure response at 3 months, 42% at 6 months, and 26% at 12 months. A smaller group became seizure-free: about 14% at 3 and 6 months, and 8% at 12 months. Over time, fewer children stayed on the diet, with the biggest drop in the first 3 months. Children whose seizures improved were more likely to keep using the diet. Side effects were reported in about 20% of children, and stomach and bowel problems like constipation, diarrhea, and vomiting were the most common.
This matters because IESS is a serious epilepsy syndrome in babies, and treatment options can be limited when standard medicines do not work. The findings suggest the ketogenic diet may help some children and was generally tolerated by many in this group. But the study has limits: it was done at only one center, it did not compare the diet with another treatment, and the number of children staying on the diet dropped over time. That means the results are helpful but not enough to prove how well the diet works for all children with IESS.
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