Ketogenic Diet Therapy for Infants

Abstract

Abstract Ketogenic diet therapy (KDT) is a nonpharmacologic treatment for children with pharmacoresistant epilepsy and/or metabolic diseases. For a long time, the KDT was not recommended for use in infancy (children < 2 years old) because this is such a crucial period in development and the risk of nutritional inadequacies was considered too great. To date, side effects in infants are identified, well described, and manageable by close monitoring from a multidisciplinary team. The international consensus guidelines for infants published in 2016 give guidance on how the diet should be administered and in whom, with the aim to set out optimal clinical practice that can be utilized and followed in the care of an infant being treated with KDT. Future prospective intervention studies should focus on fine-tuning the recommendations to the needs of this specific age group, in order to enable them to reach their developmental milestones, to improve cognitive outcomes, and to limit the side effects (e.g., growth retardation) in the longer term. This chapter not only gives an update of the literature and summarizes the recommendations of the international infant guidelines, but also demonstrates some case calculations from clinical practice.