Dietary therapies for epilepsy in low resource settings: challenges and successes

Abstract

The Ketogenic Diet (KD) is a high fat, low carbohydrate and restricted protein diet which has been used for the treatment of drug resistant epilepsy in children. It is considered the treatment of choice for refractory nonsurgical epilepsy in children. However, despite this being a very useful and relatively simple treatment, children from developing countries have not been able to benefit as much as their counterparts in more privileged settings. In this article, the challenges faced by pediatric neurologists and parents who wish to use the diet in children with refractory epilepsy are discussed, and also the simple low cost innovations which can be used to overcome these challenges are suggested. The evolution from the use of the classic ketogenic diet to the flexible use of the modified Atkins diet in low resource settings will be discussed.