High-Fat and Low-Carbohydrate Dietary Environments Are Linked to Reduced Idiopathic Epilepsy Incidence and Prevalence

Abstract

Dietary manipulations like ketogenic diets are established interventions for recalcitrant epilepsy. However, it remains unknown whether specific macronutrient exposure through dietary environments could possibly extend to primary preventive qualities, associated with changes in epilepsy disease burden (prevalence and incidence). Here, macronutrient supply, GDP, and idiopathic epilepsy disease burden data were collated from more than 150 countries from 1990 to 2018. Nutritional geometry generalized additive mixed models (GAMMs) modeling unraveled that dietary environments with high-fat and low-carbohydrate supplies were linked to lower epilepsy incidence and prevalence. Our analyses suggested a plausible primary preventive role of dietary manipulations for epilepsy.