Oxford trial tests ketogenic diet for early psychosis prevention

A £1.17 million grant just put ketogenic therapy into a harder test at Oxford, and that is the real story here. Instead of another anecdote-heavy mental health experiment, this one is a randomized controlled trial in 50 young people ages 14 to 35 who are at clinical high risk of psychosis.

That design matters. Participants will be assigned to either a 12-week modified ketogenic diet or a control diet, with the team tracking symptoms through the Comprehensive Assessment of At-Risk Mental States tool. But the study is not stopping at symptom scores. Oxford will also measure cognitive function, sleep behavior and physical health, then follow outcomes for up to three years through electronic health records. That gives the trial a shot at answering the question keto readers keep hearing in different forms: does therapeutic keto change the course of disease, or just make a lab result look good for a few weeks?

The population is the other big deal. Clinical high risk for psychosis is a pre-symptomatic window, when people may show warning signs but have not developed a full psychotic disorder. A major meta-analysis found transition risk reaching about 25% at 3 years and 35% at 10 years, which is why prevention research in this group carries so much weight. If a diet can help here, it is not a wellness tweak. It could mean intervening before long-term disability sets in.

Oxford’s OPEN service, the Oxfordshire Prevention and Early detectioN service, will sit close to the action. It serves young people ages 14 to 35 in Oxford and specializes in identifying people at risk of psychosis. Amedeo Minichino, who is the clinical lead for OPEN, is leading the effort from inside that early-detection pipeline, where the whole point is to catch risk before the illness becomes entrenched.

The trial also shows how much the field has changed since Baszucki Group began funding the first ketogenic-diet clinical trials for serious mental illness in 2022. The group says more than a dozen ketogenic therapy trials are now completed or underway across major depression, schizophrenia spectrum disorder, bipolar disorder and anorexia. That shift from isolated pilots to a broader portfolio is what gives this Oxford study extra credibility.

It still lands in a field where the evidence is early, with 2025 review work describing schizophrenia-spectrum keto research as small, preliminary and still leaning on pilot data and case reports. That is exactly why this trial matters. It moves the conversation away from cure claims and toward measurable outcomes, nutritional ketosis, adherence checks with glucose and ketone meters, and the kind of follow-through that can tell readers whether keto belongs in serious psychiatry or just in the hype cycle.