Ketogenic Diet and Adenosine: Epigenetics and Antiepileptogenesis

NARRATIVE Seizures and their progression can be prevented by metabolic therapy with a ketogenic diet – a disease- modifying strategy with clinically significant benefits that have been observed consistently for nearly 100 years. This benefit is not found with anticonvulsant drugs used to treat epilepsy, and evidence published by us and others suggests that the ketogenic diet and one of its key anti-seizure mechanisms – the neuromodulator adenosine – mobilizes lasting epigenetic changes that can prevent and reverse the clinical conditions known as epilepsy. Here we quantify the ability of a ketogenic diet to prevent progression of epileptic seizures and identify epigenetic mechanisms that restore and maintain normal brain activity.