Potassium Citrate Inhibits Kidney Stones

BALTIMOREPotassium citrate taken twice daily, either as powder sprinkled on food or dissolved in water, may inhibit kidney stone formation in children on the high-fat ketogenic diet to control epileptic seizures, according to research from Johns Hopkins Childrens Center.

In their 4-year study, the Hopkins Childrens team followed 121 epileptic children with intractable seizures on the high-fat, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet designed to control such seizures. While most children developed high cholesterol after starting the diet, in half of them, cholesterol gradually improved returning to normal or near-normal levels, with or without modifications to their diet to reduce fat intake.

Researchers point out that diet modificationsincluding reducing total fat content or certain types of fats called saturated fats and adding nutritional supplementsreduced high cholesterol just as much as doing nothing. High cholesterol is defined as total cholesterol greater than 200 mg per deciliter of blood, bad or LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol greater than 130, triglycerides greater than 130, and good or HDL (high-density lipoprotein) lower than 35.

We are greatly encouraged by our findings because the nearly half of the children on the diet were either able to maintain healthy cholesterol or gradually metabolized the extra fat and returned to somewhat normal cholesterol levels, says senior investigator Eric Kossoff, MD, a pediatric neurologist at Hopkins Childrens. This means the benefits of the dieta diet that is lifesaving in many children and therapeutic in most of themcontinue to outweigh the risks.