Keto diet may treat epilepsy by changing the gut microbiome

Mice are more resistant to seizures when treated with gut microbes from children with epilepsy on the low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet. This suggests that the diet’s anti-seizure effect comes from changes to the gut microbiome.

The ketogenic, or keto, diet has been used to treat epilepsy for around a century, but how it does so is unclear. Previously, Elaine Hsiao at the University of California, Los Angeles, and her colleagues found that the diet doesn’t protect against …