BEIJING, March 22 -- In a case study reported in The Lancet, doctors place a safety question mark over the Atkins diet, the high-protein food regime that unleashed a craze in the United States in the 1990s.

    Atkins stresses meat, butter and other dairy products ¡ª high-fat foods typically limited in classic diets ¡ª but cuts potatoes, rice and pasta to negligible levels and greatly limits intake of fruit and vegetables.

    The diet's premise is that a carbohydrate-starved body will start to burn up stored fat cells, a process called ketosis.

    But in the case reported in the leading British medical weekly, doctors at New York's Lenox Hill Hospital blame Atkins for a "life-threatening complication" for a woman who had strictly followed the diet.

    The patient, a 40-year-old obese woman, reported a weight loss of nine kilos a month after she began the diet.

    She ate meat, cheese and salads, supplemented by minerals and vitamins sold by Atkins Nutritionals Inc., the company founded by diet pioneer Robert Atkins in 1989.

    Urine and blood analysis showed she had severe ketoacidosis ¡ª a condition in which dangerously high levels of ketone acids build up in the liver as a result of a depletion of insulin. Ketoacidosis, which is more usually seen among diabetics and victims of starvation, can lead to a coma.

    The patient responded well to rehydration and glucose infusion and left the hospital after four days.

    "Our patient had an underlying ketosis caused by the Atkins diet, and developed severe ketoacidosis, possibly when her oral intake was compromised from mild pancreatitis or gastroenteritis," said the doctors, led by Klaus-Dieter Lessnau.

    "This problem may become more recognized because this diet is becoming increasingly popular worldwide."

    In a commentary also published in The Lancet, Lyn Steffen and Jennifer Nettleton of the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health blasted Atkins as "clearly... not nutritionally balanced."

    "Low-carbohydrate diets for weight management are far from healthy, given their association with ketosis, constipation or diarrhea, halitosis, headache and general fatigue to name a few," they said.

    "These diets also increase the protein load to the kidneys and alter the acid balance of the body, which result in loss of minerals from bone stores, thus compromising bone integrity."

(Source: Shenzhen Daily/Agencies)