Study: Ketogenic Diet Might Alleviate Gout Symptoms
A team of researchers have found that adhering to a high-fat, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet can mitigate the symptoms of gout in rodents as well as humans.
The team recruited healthy adults for the study who were between the ages of 18 and 45, or aged 65 and older. Participants were not fasting when their peripheral blood was collected, according to the authors, who also conducted statistical analyses and performed all experiments at least twice. Investigators also induced gout in rodents, which were fed a ketogenic diet for 1 week before starting the experiments.
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Led by Vishwa Deep Dixit, DVM, PhD, a professor of comparative medicine and immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine, the investigators found that, overall, a ketogenic diet raised BHB levels, which subsequently inhibited the NLRP3 inflammasome, which serves to trigger gout flares. As such, the symptoms of urate crystal-induced gout were alleviated without negatively affecting the immune system or its ability to defend against bacterial infections. In addition, BHB blocked IL-1B in the neutrophils of rodents as well as humans, according to the authors.
"Consistent with reduced gouty flares in rats fed a ketogenic diet, BHB blocked IL - 1β in neutrophils in a NLRP3-dependent manner in mice and humans irrespective of age," they wrote. "Mechanistically, BHB inhibited the NLRP3 inflammasome in neutrophils by reducing priming and assembly steps. Collectively, our studies show that BHB, a known alternate metabolic fuel, is also an anti-inflammatory molecule that may serve as a treatment for gout."
—Mark McGraw
Reference
Goldberg EL, Asher JL, Molony RD, et al. β-Hydroxybutyrate deactivates neutrophil nlrp3 inflammasome to relieve gout flares [published online February 28, 2017]. Cell Reports. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2017.02.004.