The Ketogenic and Atkins diets effect on intractable epilepsy: A comparison

Intractable epilepsy is a major difficulty in child neurology, because the numbers
of drugs that are available for treatment are limited and new treatments such as
diets must be tried. Now there are some diets available for treating patients with
intractable epilepsy. The oldest diet is the classic ketogenic diet and one of the
newest diets is the modified Atkins diet. Patients have a harder time accepting
the classic ketogenic diet than the Atkins diet, which is easier to accept because
the food tastes better. This study compares the efficacy of the ketogenic diet and
the Atkins diet for intractable epilepsy in children.
Materials & Methods
This study is a clinical trial survey with sample size of 40 children with refractory
epilepsy who were patients at Mofid hospital in Tehran, Iran. Initially, from Jan
2005–Oct 2007, 20 children were treated with the Atkins diet, and then from Oct
2007–March 2010, the other group was treated with the classic ketogenic diet
and the results were compared.
Results
In this study, response to treatment was greater than a 50% reduction in seizures
and at the end of first, second, and third months for the ketogenic diet were 55%,
30%, and 70% and for the Atkins diet were 50%, 65%, and 70%, respectively.
Conclusion
The results of this study show that there is no significant difference between the
classic Ketogenic diet and the Atkins diet at the end of first, second, and third
months and both had similar responses to the treatments