A July 2021 study by UCL said:
"The ketogenic diet has been used for 100 years to treat epilepsy, helping reduce seizures in both children and adults.”
"It has long been thought the diet was effective due to its production of ketones, however we now believe the increase in levels of the fatty acid, decanoic acid, also produced by the diet, may provide the powerful antiseizure effects.”
"In this study we evaluated a newly developed medium chain triglyceride (type of dietary fat) supplement, designed to increase levels of decanoic acid, while also reducing the adverse side effects, and to be more palatable."
"Our study provides early evidence of the tolerability and effectiveness of a new dietary supplement in severe drug-resistant epilepsies in adults and children and provides a further treatment option in these devastating conditions.”
"It also offers an alternative, more liberal, diet for those who cannot tolerate or do not have access to ketogenic diets."
"While this study was not designed to include enough patients to fully assess the supplement's effects on seizures, it is exciting to report that there was a statistically significant reduction in the number of seizures in the group overall after three months of treatment.
"Furthermore, high ketone levels were not observed in over 90% of the participants. This indicates that the effect of the diet was independent from ketosis; this is important because high ketone levels in the ketogenic diets contribute to both short- and longer-term side effects."
Dr Natasha Schoeler, Research Dietitian at UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, commented: "This novel dietary approach for epilepsy management involves following the principles of a healthy balanced diet alongside use of K.Vita, allowing greater dietary freedom compared to ketogenic diets. Our approach also requires much less input from a specialist dietician than is required by traditional ketogenic diets, and so may allow more widespread access to people with drug-resistant epilepsy.”