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HealthDay News — An adjunctive ketogenic dietary treatment may improve outcomes for individuals with serious mental illness and existing metabolic abnormalities, according to a pilot study published online March 27 in Psychiatry Research.
Shebani Sethi, MD, from Stanford Medicine in California, and colleagues investigated the effects of a four-month ketogenic diet on individuals with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder with existing metabolic abnormalities. The analysis included 23 participants in a single arm.
The researchers found improvements in metabolic health, with no participants meeting metabolic syndrome criteria by study conclusion. There were significant reductions in weight (12%), body mass index (12%), waist circumference (13%), and visceral adipose tissue (36%) among adherent individuals. There were also improvements in biomarkers, including a 27% decrease in homeostatic model assessment for insulin resistance and a 25% drop in triglyceride levels. Participants with schizophrenia showed a 32% reduction in Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale scores. Additionally, overall Clinical Global Impression (CGI) severity improved by an average of 31% and the proportion of participants who started with elevated symptomatology improved at least 1 point on the CGI (79%). Participants reported increased life satisfaction (17%) and enhanced sleep quality (19%).
“The ketogenic diet has been proven to be effective for treatment-resistant epileptic seizures by reducing the excitability of neurons in the brain,” Sethi said in a statement. “We thought it would be worth exploring this treatment in psychiatric conditions.”
