Is the ketogenic diet useful in dogs with epilepsy?
Several years ago, one of the dog food manufacturers formulated an experimental ketogenic diet for dogs with epilepsy. The diet was tested in dogs with naturally occurring epilepsy. I heard last week at a meeting that the study has been stopped because there was no benefit in seizure control. There are several potential limitations: Dogs are more resistant to ketosis induced by starvation, compared to people. As carnivores, dogs are adapted to relatively long periods of time between meals. Therefore, diets that induce ketosis in people may not do so in dogs. The type of epilepsies that dogs suffer may not be the same as those in people that respond to the diet. The safety of these diets has never been assessed in dogs. Pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas) is a fairly common and serious disease in dogs and may be precipitated by high levels of dietary fat. I am aware of several attempts at similar diets in dogs with epilepsy. In most cases, the client is simply adding a source of
