Does Ketogenic Diet Used in Pregnancy Affect the Nervous System Development in Offspring?─FTIR Microspectroscopy Study.

Anti-seizure medications used during pregnancy may have transient or long-lasting impact on the nervous system of the offspring. Therefore, there is a great need to search for alternative therapies for pregnant women suffering from seizures. One of the solutions may be the use of the ketogenic diet (KD), which has been successfully applied as a treatment of drug-resistant epilepsy in children and adults.

Ketogenic diet impairs neurological development of neonatal rats and affects biochemical composition of maternal brains: evidence of functional recovery in pups.

The ketogenic diet (KD) is a type of diet in which the intake of fats significantly increases at the cost of carbohydrates while maintaining an adequate amount of proteins. This kind of diet has been successfully used in clinical therapies of drug-resistant epilepsy, but there is still insufficient evidence on its safety when used in pregnancy. To assess KD effects on the course of gestation and fetal development, pregnant females were fed with: (i) KD during pregnancy and lactation periods (KD group), (ii) KD during pregnancy replaced with ND from the day 2 postpartum (KDND group) and (iii) normal diet alone (ND group).