David Baszucki put new pilot data in front of the keto and metabolic-health crowd: 18 of 22 adults with anorexia nervosa completed a supervised 14-week ketogenic therapy program, an 82% adherence rate that stood out in a field where treatment drop-off is often a major problem.
The study, led by psychiatry professor Guido Frank at the UC San Diego School of Medicine and published June 3 in Communications Medicine, enrolled adults who were weight-normalized or mildly underweight and treated them in an outpatient setting. Researchers reported no significant change in weight during the program, while 72% of completers reached the recovered range on eating-disorder symptom scales and all completers improved on depression scores. The trial was framed as a feasibility and safety test of a weight-maintaining ketogenic dietary therapy, not a proof that the approach can yet stand on its own as standard care.
That caution matters because anorexia nervosa is still among the deadliest psychiatric disorders, with the release citing a death every 52 minutes in the United States from the illness or its complications. In that context, the result is striking less for any single biomarker than for the combination of high adherence, stable weight, and self-reported and scale-based improvement in a tightly supervised study. Baszucki Group described the work as the first pilot trial to evaluate ketogenic therapy as an intervention for anorexia nervosa, which makes the result notable but also keeps it firmly in early-stage territory.
The funding backdrop is impossible to miss. Baszucki Group supported the trial, and UC San Diego’s trial registry shows the broader ketogenic diet program began in October 2023 and is scheduled to run until around June 2027. Related studies are listed for weight-recovered anorexia nervosa, an underweight anorexia sub-study, and bulimia nervosa, all part of a wider push to test whether nutritional ketosis can play a role in psychiatric care. Earlier UC San Diego work, inspired in part by patient Caroline Beckwith, helped shape that program.
For keto readers, the headline is not a cue to self-prescribe. It is a signal that ketogenic therapy is being explored as a supervised psychiatric tool, with unusually high adherence in a tiny, founder-backed pilot, and the real test still ahead in larger studies.
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