A recent study found a low-carb, high-fat "keto-like" diet may double the risk of cardiovascular events, CNN reported March 5.
The study, which has not been peer reviewed, was published in American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session Together With the World Congress of Cardiology. Researchers compared the diets of 305 people eating a keto-like diet with about 1,200 people eating a standard diet in the U.K. They found people eating a keto-like diet — 45 percent of total daily calories coming from fat and 25 percent coming from carbohydrates — had higher levels of LDL cholesterol and apolipoprotein B, a protein that coats LDL cholesterol and can predict heart disease.
"After an average of 11.8 years of follow-up — and after adjustment for other risk factors for heart disease, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity and smoking — people on an LCHF diet had more than two-times higher risk of having several major cardiovascular events, such as blockages in the arteries that needed to be opened with stenting procedures, heart attack, stroke and peripheral arterial disease," researchers said in a news release.
Researchers noted that their study only shows an association between the diet and increased risk of cardiovascular events, not a causal relationship.