EN
INTRODUCTION: The ketogenic diet is a high fat low carbohydrate diet, wherein the majority of caloric needs is covered by fats with very low carbohydrate intake. The diet is widely used not only by athletes and patients suffering from obesity or diabetes, but also by patients with intractable epilepsy. The high fat, low carbohydrate diet is extensively studied within the fields of numerous diseases including cancer and neurological disorders. METHOD(S): In present study, we used Purkinje cell (PCs) specific knockout mice lacking hamartin (tsc1), a key protein involved in mTORC1 pathway. Deletion of Tsc1 gene in PCs results in a loss of these cells and gait impairments. We implemented a ketogenic rodent chow to reveal its potential influence on prevention of loss of PCs in the cerebellum. We assessed the effects of treatment with the ketogenic diet on the quality of mice gait. The gait was analysed in the CatWalk system from Noldus. Obtained data were compared among groups: control animals, with tsc1 in PCs, fed with standard rodent diet, animals with tsc1 but fed with ketogenic chow and knockout mice, fed respectively with two types of abovementioned diets. RESULTS: Our results revealed that, as expected, animals without hamartin in PCs present severe gait disturbances. Supplementation of the ketogenic diet has no effect on gait disturbances caused by deletion of tsc1 in PCs. CONCLUSIONS: Additionally, statistical analysis of data obtained from animals without gene deletion didn’t bring any proof of differences in gait parameters between groups fed with two different chows.