Keto Diets’ Anti-Seizure Effect Attributable to Gut Bacteria
The ketogenic diet (KD) is used to treat a variety of disorders, one of which is refractory epilepsy. However, the mechanisms underlying its neuroprotective effects remain unclear and researchers have now undertaken a study to investigate the same.
The ketogenic diet is a high fat, low-carb diet that’s become popular for weight reduction. However, the diet was used in the treatment of epilepsy since the 1920s, according to the Epilepsy Society, a charity in the UK.
Even though most individuals with epilepsy now control their seizures with anti-epileptic medications, the diet is occasionally prescribed to kids with epilepsy who haven’t responded to a number of drugs.
While on the diet, the body is forced to utilize fats rather than carbs (sugars) as its fuel supply. And when this occurs, the body produces compounds known as ketones, which cells utilize for energy.
UCLA scientists have now identified specific gut bacteria that have been observed to play a central role in the anti-seizure effects of the high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet.
The study, is seemingly the first to establish a causal link between seizure susceptibility and the gut microbiota— the 100 trillion or so bacteria and
other microbes that reside in our intestines.“Findings from our study reveal that treating mice chronically with specific bacteria that were enriched by the ketogenic diet protected them from seizures,” study senior author Elaine Hsiao, an assistant professor of integrative biology and physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), told Live Science.
When the investigators analyzed the effect of this diet that didn’t have some gut bacteria- possibly because the mice had been increased in a sterile environment, or because they had been treated with antibiotics- they revealed that the keto diet no longer shielded against seizures.
“This suggests that the gut microbiota [bacteria] is required for the diet to effectively reduce seizures,” study lead author Christine Olson, a UCLA graduate student in Hsiao’s laboratory, said in a statement.
The analysis also discovered that two kinds of bacteria, known as Akkermansia muciniphila and Parabacteroides, were raised from the diet.
Whenever these two forms were given in conjunction to mice which didn’t possess their own gut bacteria, the anti-seizure impact of the keto diet was revived. Furthermore, this combo of bacteria shielded from seizures if the mice were fed with a non-keto diet.
“This study inspires us to study whether similar roles for gut microbes are seen in people that are on the ketogenic diet,” said co-author Helen Vuong, a postdoctoral scholar in Hsiao’s laboratory.
“The implications for health and disease are promising, but much more research needs to be done to test whether discoveries in mice also apply to humans,” said Hsiao, who is also an assistant professor of medicine in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
