A high-fat diet that is low in carbohydrate may reverse damage to kidneys in people with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, researchers say.
The findings by researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine, USA, could have significant implications for those diagnosed with diabetic kidney failure.
Dr Charles Mobbs, professor of neuroscience and geriatrics and palliative care medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, said: "Our study is the first to show that a dietary intervention alone is enough to reverse this serious complication of diabetes.”
The findings are published in PLoS ONE.
His research team allowed mice that were genetically predisposed to have Type 1 or 2 diabetes to develop diabetic nephropathy, or kidney failure.
Half were put on a ketogenic diet (high-fat, low-carbohydrate), while the control group maintained a standard high carbohydrate diet. After eight weeks, kidney failure was reversed in the mice on the ketogenic diet, which is typically used to control seizures in children with epilepsy.
Because of the extreme requirements of the diet, it is not a long-term solution in adults, but Dr Mobbs’ research indicates that exposure to the diet for as little as a month may be sufficient to "reset" the gene expression and pathological process leading to kidney failure.
"Knowing how the ketogenic diet reverses nephropathy will help us identify a drug target and subsequent pharmacological interventions that mimic the effect of the diet," said Dr Mobbs. "We look forward to studying this promising development further."
They plan to continue to research the impact of the ketogenic diet and examine of it could help treat other neurological diseases and retinopathy, a disease that results in vision loss.
The researchers also identified genes that played a role in the development of the complication, which are associated with kidney failure. The expression of the genes was reversed in the mice on the ketogenic diet.
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