Symptom Severity from Posttraumatic Stress is Not Correlated to C-reactive Protein Level or Altered by Ketone Salt Supplementation

Langston Gilmore¹, Nagy A. Youssef², Jennifer Waller³, Rebecca Nalloor⁴, Max Wieder⁵, Angelia Holland-Winkler^{6,* ✉}

1 - Department of Psychiatry and Health Behavior, Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, Augusta, Georgia, USA; langilmore@augusta.edu
2 - Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Health, The Ohio State University College of Medicine, OSU Harding Hospital, Columbus, Ohio, USA; Nagy.Youssef@osumc.edu
3 - Population Health Sciences, Division of Biostatistics and Data Science, Augusta University, Augusta, Georgia, USA; jwaller@augusta.edu
4 - Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Augusta University, Augusta, Georgia, USA; rnalloor@augusta.edu
5 - Department of Medicine, Augusta University, Augusta, GA, USA; mwieder@augusta.edu
6 - Department of Kinesiology, Augusta University, Augusta, Georgia, USA; awinkler@augusta.edu

Correspondence: Angelia Holland-Winkler, awinkler@augusta.edu

DOI: https://doi.org/10.55453/rjmm.2023.126.4.7

Received: March 3, 2023

Accepted: April 12, 2023

Abstract:

This study aimed to determine if: 1) C-reactive protein (CRP) level correlated with PTSD symptom severity as measured by PTSD Checklist-5 (PCL-5), and 2) ketone supplement reduced PTSD symptoms. Twenty participants with PTSD were randomly assigned to a ketone supplementation or placebo group and evaluated for 6-weeks for PTSD symptom severity and CRP levels. The Spearman Rank correlation between PCL-5 and CRP was positive, but not statistically significant. Mixed models on the ranks of the data were used to examine the difference in PCL-5 and CRP between ketone and control groups over time. Median PCL-5 at the pre-test was higher than at the post-test in the ketone group but not in the control. The reduction of PCL-5 medians between ketone and control groups at the post-test was not different. The median pre-test CRP was not different from than post-test in the ketone group or control group. This pilot study did not find a correlation between CRP levels and PTSD symptom severity but was limited by a lack of CRP data collection due to the loss of follow-up. PTSD symptom severity was not altered by 6 weeks of chronic ketone salt supplementation compared to the control group but should be examined in a larger sample size for further verification.