Implementation of ketogenic diet in children with drug-resistant epilepsy in a medium resources setting: Egyptian experience

BACKGROUND: Even with the extensive use of ketogenic dietary therapies (KD), there still exist many areas of the world that do not provide these treatments. Implementing the ketogenic diet in different countries forms a real challenge in order to match the cultural and economic differences. AIM: To assess the feasibility of implementing a ketogenic diet plan in a limited resource setting with identification of the compliance, tolerability and side effects in the target population and to assess the efficacy of the ketogenic diet in children with intractable epilepsy. METHOD OF THE STUDY: The medical records of 28 patients with intractable epilepsy, treated at The Children's Hospital - Cairo University from December 2012 to March 2014 with ketogenic dietary therapy were reviewed. The non-fasting protocol was followed without hospital admission. All children were started on a standardized classic ketogenic diet with a ratio ranging from 2.5-4:1 (grams of fat to combined carbohydrate and protein). Patients were followed at 1, 3 and 6 months after diet initiation. RESULTS: The median age was 60 months (range, 30-110). After 1 month from diet initiation, 16 patients (57%) remained on the diet. One of them (6.3%) had more than 90% reduction in seizure frequency, an additional 6 patients (37.5%) had a 50-90% reduction in seizure frequency. In total, seven out of the 16 patients continuing the diet for 1 month (43.8%) had more than 50% improvement in seizure control from the base line. Despite having 50-90% seizure control, three children discontinued the diet after one month.Three months after diet initiation, 6 patients (22%) remained on diet, 4 of them (66.7%) had more than 50% reduction in seizure frequency.At 6 months, only 3 patients remained on diet, 2 of them (66.6%) had 50-90% reduction in seizure frequency, while one patient (33.3%) showed better than 90% decrease in seizure. CONCLUSION: The current study shows that the ketogenic diet could be implemented in medium resources countries and should be included in the management of children with intractable epilepsy.