ALS Milder by high-carbohydrate diet

Nervous disease ALS: Alleviation by carbohydrates

03/01/2014

A carbohydrate-rich diet could alleviate the course of the deadly nervous disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), according to a US study. Accordingly, symptoms such as muscle pain, itchy rash or pneumonia occurred less frequently during the examination.

Diet with many carbohydrates performs best
The results of a US study suggest that the course of the deadly nervous disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) could be alleviated by a diet rich in carbohydrates. As it is in an article published on Friday in the trade magazine „The Lancet“ In other words, in a study of 20 patients, the US scientists investigated the effects of different diets on the patients. The best way to cut off a high carbohydrate diet. However, "in view of the small number of trial participants, further tests must show whether the findings can be generalized", as stated in the study report.

Patients ultimately lose the power to breathe
ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig syndrome, affects nerve cells responsible for skeletal muscle control. Sufferers become tired and weak and even lose the power to move and ultimately to breathe. Patients also find it difficult to eat. They eventually have to be nourished via a nasogastric tube. On average, people with ALS die about three to five years after the initial diagnosis. The researchers' assumption that patients die sooner when they lose weight has also been shown in animal studies. Thus, experiments with mice had shown that those animals who lived on a high-calorie diet rich in fats lived longer.

Participants had to be nourished by gastric tube
The scientists from the United States now studied three different diets in the 20 patients who had advanced ALS and had to be nasogastric-fed. Patients in a control group received so many calories that body weight should actually remain stable. In the other two groups, sufferers received 125 percent of the calories needed to maintain weight. In one of these groups, the diet was particularly fatty, in the other particularly carbohydrate-containing. Patients in the four-month trial were followed for another five months. It turned out that the patients from the group with a particularly carbohydrate-rich diet were significantly better over time than those from the other two groups. They suffered less often from muscle pain, skin rashes or pneumonia. In addition, no one died from this group in the five months after the special diet. One patient died from the high-fat diet group and three patients died from the control group.

Because of the small number of participants only limited meaningful
Also found were "significant differences in the development of body weight". Patients in the high carbohydrate diet group on average increased by 390 grams per month, while patients in the control group increased by 110 grams per month. The patients with the particularly fatty diet even decreased, they lost an average of 460 grams of body weight per month. However, the study is only conditionally meaningful because of "the small number of participants in the study". It was mainly looked at whether a change in nutrition for the patient is safe, and not what effect the conversion has.

Stephen Hawking probably the best-known ALS patient in the world
„This pilot study shows how safe a new, simple and affordable treatment is for this devastating disease, for which there are currently very few treatment options“, Study Director Anne-Marie Wills of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. „Negative effects of weight gain, such as diabetes or heart disease, as we feared, were not observed during the study period.“ There must now be larger-scale studies with patients who have ALS in their early stages. As a living example of the severity of the disease is the astrophysicist Stephen Hawking probably the most well-known ALS patient. Hawking has been confined to a wheelchair since the late 1960s. The world-renowned astrophysicist uses a voice computer to communicate. (Ad)

Picture: Halina Zaremba