WASHINGTON (AFP) - renal failure is a major complication of diabetes, but a laboratory mouse study showed that a diet rich in fat and low in carbohydrates which can reverse in eight weeks, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.
The extreme diet is known as a ketogenic and is often used to treat children with the drug-resistant epilepsy. It robs the body of carbohydrates and sugars, thus inducing the body in burning fat for fuel instead of glucose.
The diet is so restrictive that it must be developed with the assistance of an expert. Meal options may include scrambled eggs with cream, bacon and butter omelette or lettuce sprayed mayonnaise.
Doctors theorized the diet might work for people with diabetes by blocking the toxic effects of glucose, a simple sugar made the body metabolizes food but that can become harmful in patients with diabetes who do not have enough insulin to regulate.
So, the team at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York took two groups of mice with a genetic predisposition to Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes. Half were fed standard, high-carb while the other half received a ketogenic diet.
After eight weeks, renal failure was reversed in ketogenic mice fed, said the study published in the open-access journal PLoS ONE.
"Our study is the first to show that a dietary intervention alone is sufficient to reverse this serious complication of diabetes," said lead author Charles Mobbs at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
"This result has important implications for tens of thousands of Americans suffering from diabetic renal failure and other complications possibly, every year."
According to the National Institutes of Health, 24 million people in the United States have diabetes, and approximately 180 000 people living with kidney failure related to their diabetes.
Mobbs, has stated that the diet is not likely to be adapted as a solution in the long term in humans, but said that the results indicate same little as a month on the regime might be enough to "reset" the body and prevent kidney failure.
Mobbs said the findings should "we help identify target of drug and subsequent pharmacologic interventions that mimic the effect of the diet."
His team is planning studies to explore the impact of the ketogenic on other neurological diseases such as retinopathy, resulting in a loss of sight.
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