The ketogenic diet is an established and effective non-pharmacological treatment for epilepsy [1]. As a first-line therapy it is recommended in deficiencies of enzymes involved in glucose utilization such as the glucose transporter 1 and the pyruvate dehydrogenase deficiency syndromes [2]. Otherwise, the ketogenic diet is recommended when at least two antiepileptic drugs fail. Idiopathic generalized epilepsy syndromes, however, are responding relatively well to the ketogenic diet [3, 4] with 34 % of absence epilepsy patients becoming seizure-free [5]. Currently, there is a tendency towards the use of less strict but easier-to-follow variants of the classical ketogenic diets, such as the modified Atkins diet and the low glycemic index treatment [5, 6]. In a study by Groomes et al. [5] absence epilepsy responded similarly to the ketogenic diet and the modified Atkins diet. Regarding its macronutrient content the paleolithic diet belongs to the low-carbohydrate diets. Also referred to as the evolutionary diet, the paleolithic diet is increasingly popular since the release of the book of Cordain [7] who is now regarded as the founder of the paleolithic diet. Cordain was greatly inspired by Voegtlin [8] who was the first proponent of the diet as well as Eaton and Konner [9] who introduced the concept into a mainstream journal. The paleolithic diet advocates foods humans are evolutionarily adapted to and excludes those that were not available in pre-agricultural times such as grains, diary, legumes, starchy vegetables, refined sugars, oils rich in omega-6 fatty acids and margarines. In this study, a case of a child diagnosed with absence epilepsy and then successfully treated with a carbohydrate-restricted paleolithic diet, we referred to as the paleolithic ketogenic diet, is reported.
All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 and 2008. Informed consent was obtained from the parents of the child for being included in the study.