Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Purines And The Anti-Epileptic Actions Of Ketogenic Diets, Susan A. Masino, Masahito Kawamura Jr., David N. Ruskin, Jeremy Gawryluk, Xuesong Chen, Jonathan D. Geiger

Faculty Scholarship

Ketogenic diets are high in fat and low in carbohydrates and represent a well-established and effective treatmentalternative to anti-epileptic drugs. Ketogenic diets are used for the management of a variety of difficult-to-treat or intractableseizure disorders, especially pediatric refractory epilepsy. However, it has been shown that this dietary therapycan reduce seizures in people of all ages, and ketogenic diets are being applied to other prevalent medical conditions suchas diabetes. Although used effectively to treat epilepsy for nearly 90 years, the mechanism(s) by which ketogenic dietswork to reduce seizures remain ill-understood. One mechanism receiving increased attention is based on findings that ketogenicdiets …