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Intermittent Fasting in Refractory Epilepsy

U

University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH)

Status and phase

Terminated
Phase 2

Conditions

Epilepsy

Treatments

Other: Intermittent fasting

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT02311023
UCLH 13/0389

Details and patient eligibility

About

This is an open trial of intermittent fasting in a group of patients with refractory seizures. Patients will continue on the diet for 6 months to assess the impact of the diet on seizure frequency.

Full description

A proportion of people with epilepsy continue to have seizures despite all conventional treatment options. The classical ketogenic diet and its variants have been shown to help some of these people. However, these diets require significant medical and dietician supervision,and is frequently not well tolerated. There is a need to develop other diet therapy that is easier to administer and more acceptable to the patient. This trial undertaken in adult overweight UCLH outpatients examines the effect of an intermittent fasting diet on seizures. Subjects may consume their normal diet for 5 days a week. On 2 days in a week, they consume only 25% of their daily calorie requirement. Subjects will continue on the diet for 6 months. Intermittent fasting has been shown in animal studies to activate a number of signalling pathways which are thought to reduce seizure thresholds. Has intermittent fasting in humans might be expected to reduce seizures.

Enrollment

4 patients

Sex

All

Ages

18+ years old

Volunteers

No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

  • Experiencing at least 2 seizures per month
  • .BMI of 25 or over

Exclusion criteria

  • Current/previous eating disorder
  • Pregnancy

Trial design

Primary purpose

Treatment

Allocation

N/A

Interventional model

Single Group Assignment

Masking

None (Open label)

4 participants in 1 patient group

Intermittent fasting
Experimental group
Description:
Patients consume their normal diet for 5 days in the week. On 2 days they only consume 500 Cals if female and 600 Cals if male.
Treatment:
Other: Intermittent fasting

Trial contacts and locations

1

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Data sourced from clinicaltrials.gov

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