A ketone supplement might help control diabetic hyperglycaemia, researchers report today.
Professor Jonathan Little of the University of British Columbia, Canada, and colleagues at the University of Oxford, UK, worked together on research into the ketone ester supplement.
They recruited 20 healthy participants who fasted for ten hours then were given a ketone monoester supplement or a placebo. Half an hour later they were given a standard oral glucose tolerance test – a drink containing 75g sugar. For the next 2.5 hours they had blood samples taken, to measure glucose, lipids, and hormones.
This showed that, compared with placebo, the blood sugar spike was reduced when participants had the ketone drink. The researchers point out that more research is needed to investigate the effect on people with prediabetes, type 2 diabetes and obesity. They add that the physiological mechanisms behind this effect also need to be explained.
Details are published today (14 February) in the Journal of Physiology.
Professor Little said: "Our study was done in healthy young participants but if the same responses were seen in people with, or at risk for, type 2 diabetes then it is possible that a ketone monoester supplement could be used to lower glucose levels and improve metabolic health. We are working on these studies at the moment.
"The ketone supplements do not taste very good and, in order to blind the participants, we had to make a control drink that also tasted distinctly bad. It made for interesting mornings seeing how the participants would respond to the taste of their drinks!"
Little, J. et al. Prior Ingestion of Exogenous Ketone Monoester Attenuates the Glycemic Response to an Oral Glucose Tolerance Test in Healthy Young Individuals. Journal of Physiology 14 February 2018 doi: 10.1113/JP275709/full [abstract]
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