ReviewViruses2023
Ketogenic Diet and Ketone Bodies as Clinical Support for the Treatment of SARS-CoV-2-Review of the Evidence.
Review in Viruses, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Microbiome-Metabolome Crosstalk as a Driver of COVID-19 Severity.Medical sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- COVID-19 multi-omics reveal organ-specific responses and biomarkers.Journal of translational medicine · 2026Article
- Clinically Meaningful Improvements in Long COVID Symptoms Following Ketogenic Metabolic Therapy Combined with Lifestyle Interventions-A Clinical Case Report and Review of the Literature.Case reports in clinical medicine · 2025Article
- The Impact of a Very-Low-Calorie Ketogenic Diet on Monocyte Subsets of Patients with Obesity: A Pilot Study.Nutrients · 2025Article
- Mitochondrial metabolic rescue in post-COVID-19 syndrome: MR spectroscopy insights and precision nutritional therapeutics.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Review
- Unlocking the secrets of glucose metabolism reprogramming: the role in pulmonary diseases.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2025Review
- Metabolomic alterations in the plasma of patients with various clinical manifestations of COVID-19.Virology journal · 2024Article
- Uncovering the Effect of SARS-CoV-2 on Liver Metabolism via Genome-Scale Metabolic Modeling for Reprogramming and Therapeutic Strategies.ACS omega · 2024Article
- Very low-calorie ketogenic diet (VLCKD) in the management of hidradenitis suppurativa (Acne Inversa): an effective and safe tool for improvement of the clinical severity of disease. Results of a pilot study.Journal of translational medicine · 2024Article
- Ketogenic Diet: A Review of Composition Diversity, Mechanism of Action and Clinical Application.Journal of nutrition and metabolism · 2024Review
- COVID-19 and Gastrointestinal Tract: From Pathophysiology to Clinical Manifestations.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
One of the proposed nutritional therapies to support drug therapy in COVID-19 is the use of a ketogenic diet (KD) or ketone bodies. In this review, we summarized the evidence from tissue, animal, and human models and looked at the mechanisms of action of KD/ketone bodies against COVID-19. KD/ketone bodies were shown to be effective at the stage of virus entry into the host cell. The use of β-hydroxybutyrate (BHB), by preventing the metabolic reprogramming associated with COVID-19 infection and improving mitochondrial function, reduced glycolysis in CD4+ lymphocytes and improved respiratory chain function, and could provide an alternative carbon source for oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS). Through multiple mechanisms, the use of KD/ketone bodies supported the host immune response. In animal models, KD resulted in protection against weight loss and hypoxemia, faster recovery, reduced lung injury, and resulted in better survival of young mice. In humans, KD increased survival, reduced the need for hospitalization for COVID-19, and showed a protective role against metabolic abnormalities after COVID-19. It appears that the use of KD and ketone bodies may be considered as a clinical nutritional intervention to assist in the treatment of COVID-19, despite the fact that numerous studies indicate that SARS-CoV-2 infection alone may induce ketoacidosis. However, the use of such an intervention requires strong scientific validation.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.