Fasting might advantage patients with epilepsy


Dec. 6, 2012 ? Children with determined and drug-resistant seizures treated with a high-fat, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet might get an combined healing advantage from periodic fasting, according to a tiny Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study.

The results, published online Dec. 3 in a biography Epilepsy Research, advise a ketogenic diet and fasting can work in tandem to revoke seizures though seem do so by opposite mechanisms — a anticipating that hurdles a longstanding arrogance that a dual share a common mechanism.

“Our commentary advise that fasting does not merely feature a healing effects of a ketogenic diet though might indeed paint an wholly new approach to change a metabolism of children with epilepsy,” says lead questioner Adam Hartman, M.D., a pediatric neurologist during a Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

In a study, 6 children, ages 2 to 7, and all on a ketogenic diet, were asked to quick on swap days. All 6 children had seizure disorders somewhat resolved by a diet alone.

Four of a 6 children gifted between 50 percent and 99 percent fewer seizures after a fasts were combined to a dietary regimen. Three of a 6 were means to continue a fasting fast for dual months or longer.

The Johns Hopkins investigators contend while a formula are preliminary, they do yield constrained justification of a intensity advantages of fasting. Periodic fasts, they add, might eventually infer to be an choice standalone therapy in children with drug-resistant epilepsy.

The researchers counsel that incomparable studies are indispensable to serve clarify a effects of fasting. They also advise that fasting should be finished underneath a despotic organisation of a pediatric neurologist.

Made adult of high-fat dishes and few carbohydrates, a ketogenic diet is believed to work by triggering biochemical changes that discharge seizure-causing brief circuits in a brain’s signaling system. The diet, popularized in a early 1900s, was designed to impersonate a physiologic effects of fasting — a seizure-control process adored by ancient Greeks. Since then, physicians have believed that a dual therapies share a common mechanism.

The new Johns Hopkins findings, however, advise otherwise.

“We think that fasting affects haughtiness cells in a totally opposite demeanour from a ketogenic diet,” Hartman says.

This supposition stemmed from a 2010 investigate of mice conducted by a Johns Hopkins team.

Two groups of epileptic mice — one treated with a ketogenic diet and one treated with fasting — had strikingly opposite responses to opposite seizure triggers. Animals treated with a ketogenic diet gifted fewer seizures than fasting mice when unprotected to low amounts of electricity, though fared worse when they were injected with kainic acid, a manly shaken complement opiate and a famous seizure trigger. Fasting mice, on a other hand, did worse when unprotected to electricity though tolerated kainic poison injections distant improved than their ketogenic diet counterparts.

In other words, a researchers say, any therapy stable opposite one seizure trigger, while augmenting attraction to a other.

“We don’t entirely know a reasons for these noted differences, though unraveling a mechanisms behind them will assistance pave a approach toward new therapies for epilepsy, and is a concentration of a ongoing work,” says Eric Kossoff, M.D., pediatric neurologist and executive of a ketogenic diet hospital during a Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

James Rubenstein, M.D., of Johns Hopkins was co-author on a research.

Other amicable bookmarking and pity tools:


Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials supposing by Johns Hopkins Medicine, around Newswise.

Note: Materials might be edited for calm and length. For serve information, greatfully hit a source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Adam L. Hartman, James E. Rubenstein, Eric H. Kossoff. Intermittent fasting: A “new” chronological plan for determining seizures? Epilepsy Research, 2012; DOI: 10.1016/j.eplepsyres.2012.10.011

Note: If no author is given, a source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This essay is not dictated to yield medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views voiced here do not indispensably simulate those of ScienceDaily or the staff.

Source: Health Medicine Network