Ketogenic Diet and Ketones for Improving Neurologic Outcomes after Acute Neurotrauma

Abstract

Abstract Traumatic injuries to the brain and spinal cord have a global estimated incidence of several million people every year. Despite strong research efforts to find possible neuroprotective or neurorestorative therapies, treatment for people with neurotrauma is limited. For spinal cord injury (SCI), the standard of care is surgical stabilization followed by rehabilitation programs. Hence, there is an urgent need for treatments aiming to protect the nervous system from the secondary damage that occurs after the primary injury event. Preclinical data in rodents show that ketogenic diets (KDs) or ketone supplementation initiated after injury improves the outcomes from SCI or traumatic brain injury. This chapter describes the potential mechanisms by which KDs or ketone bodies provide protection after neurotrauma and reviews their current translation from the preclinical to the early clinical settings, where pilot trials in humans have shown promise.