New York : The first randomised controlled clinical trial found that the ketogenic diet, which consists of foods with very low carbohydrate levels, is effective in controlling polycystic kidney disease (PKD).
With PKD, an inherited disease, kidneys are the primary organs where clusters of cysts form, leading to progressive organ enlargement and loss of function.
The trial’s goal was to find out how the fasting response known as ketosis affected the cysts that are the disease’s defining feature. The results were published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine.
University of California-Santa Barbara biologist Thomas Weimbs expressed his happiness with the clinical trial results.
“We now have the first evidence in humans that the cysts really don’t like to be in ketosis and that they don’t seem to grow,”
These discoveries offer PKD patients a chance to manage a hereditary illness that worsens over time, impairing their quality of life, causing them to suffer and frequently necessitating kidney transplants and dialysis because the cysts impair the kidneys’ capacity to efficiently filter and eliminate waste from the body.
“If you have PKD, the dogma is that it’s a genetic disease,” Weimbs stated.
“And no matter what you do, you progress toward kidney failure and diet doesn’t make any difference, which unfortunately most patients are told to this day.”
This prevailing belief was what the Weimbs Lab and colleagues from various research institutions in Germany set out to challenge with their trial. Sixty-six PKD patients were randomly split into three groups: a control group that received routine PKD counselling, another group that underwent a three-day water fast every month, and a third group that observed a low-carbohydrate, high-fat ketogenic diet.
The patients were followed closely with blood draws and MRI scans.
At the end of the three-month trial period, the researchers found that while the control group experienced the expected growth in the size of their kidneys, the ketogenic diet patients’ kidneys stopped growing and appeared to show a tendency to shrink somewhat, though the researchers pointed out that the shrinkage over the 90-day trial period failed to meet statistical significance.
The most striking evidence came in the form of measurably improved kidney function in the ketogenic diet patients which was statistically significant. However, there is no one ketogenic diet to fit all, Weimbs said.
To get the best out of their diet, PKD patients should consult with their physicians and nutritionists as they shift away from the usual carbohydrate and sugar-laden standard diets that are pervasive in industrialised societies.
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