The CoSci website is now live!

Visit cosci.org for up-to-date information about the event (speakers, agenda, etc) or subscribe to our mailing list for updates

Tickets are now on sale for CoSci25!

February 8-9, 2025 • Artemus W Ham Concert Hall

University of Nevada Las Vegas

Once you have purchased your ticket, a confirmation email will be sent to you with a link to complete your registration* and provide an opportunity to purchase Add-Ons if you choose to do so.

*Please be sure to complete your registration by clicking on the link in your confirmation email, even if you are not purchasing any add-ons. Completing your registration helps us to prepare your conference badges and any benefits you are entitled to receive.

Early Bird Bonus

Register before November 1, 2024 and receive 5 free raffle tickets for some great prizes! (Raffle tickets can be picked up at the check-in table upon arrival at the conference venue)

Are you a business or organization that sells goods, sells services or provides support to the nutrition science and metabolic health communities?

CoSci25 is seeking sponsors and exhibitors to showcase their products and services to our attendees. Sponsors and exhibitors are crucial to our events to cover hard costs so more of our attendees’ purchases go towards donations to the Citizen Science Foundation – this is a fundraising event, after all!

For more information, please visit www.cosci.org (under the “More” tab and “Sponsors & Exhibitors”).

*If you have a product or service that you think our attendees could benefit from, please share with us, and we’ll be happy to reach out to that company or organization about sponsorship & exhibition opportunities at CoSci25.

The KETO-CTA (#LMHRstudy) vs Matched Control (#MiHeart) analysis is now published in Metabolism.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.metabol.2024.155854

METHODS

80 Participants of #LMHRstudy fell within #MiHeart age range and were then matched 1:1 for age, gender, race, diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, and past smoking to asymptomatic subjects from the #MiHeart cohort.

PRIMARY ANALYSIS

High resolution heart scans (#CCTA) allowing for primary analysis of Total Plaque Score (TPS), Total Stenosis Score (TSS) and Segment Involvement Score (SIS)

RESULTS

The matched mean age was 55.5 years, with mean #LDL cholesterol of 272 mg/dL (max LDL-C 591) mg/dl and mean 4.7 years duration on a ketogenic diet.

• There was no significant difference in coronary plaque burden of #LMHRstudy (mean LDL-C 272) cohort as compared to #MiHeart controls (mean LDL 123 mg/dl); nb: pre-KETO LDL-C in KETO group was 122 mg/dl
• There was no significant difference in CAC (median and IQR) [0 (0,56)] versus [1 (0, 49)], p = 0.520
• No relationship of LDL-C elevations and plaque

Note 1 – This analysis is on baseline scans, we will have further data on the Keto-CTA longitudinal analysis in the coming months. And — as always — please continue to work with your doctor.

Note 2 – this is a published abstract, but is not open access. A full paper for this match analysis will be published soon in a different journal and will be completely open access.

You can watch Dr. Matthew’s keynote presentation of these findings at CoSci here:

We are proud to be hosting our very first fundraising event: the Collaborative Science Conference 2024, which will be held at the the Silverton Lodge in Las Vegas, Nevada on March 15th and 16th.

For this special event, your donation is your ticket.

Please visit our new, dedicated conference site for all the details: CoSci.org

Our Principal Investigator, Dr. Matthew Budoff has now presented the matched analysis for: The KETO (#LMHRstudy) vs Control (#MiHeart) cohorts.

Watch full presentation along with follow up Q & A here:

METHODS – 80 Participants of #LMHRstudy fell within #MiHeart age range and were then matched 1:1 for age, gender, race, diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, and past smoking to asymptomatic subjects from the #MiHeart cohort.

PRIMARY ANALYSIS – High resolution heart scans (#CCTA) allowing for primary analysis of Total Plaque Score (TPS), Total Stenosis Score (TSS) and Segment Involvement Score (SIS)

RESULTS The matched mean age was 55.5 years, with mean #LDL cholesterol of 272 mg/dL (max LDL-C 591) mg/dl and mean 4.7 years duration on a ketogenic diet.

• There was no significant difference in coronary plaque burden of #LMHRstudy (mean LDL-C 272) cohort as compared to #MiHeart controls (mean LDL 123 mg/dl); nb: pre-KETO LDL-C in KETO group was 122 mg/dl
• There was no significant difference in CAC (median and IQR) [0 (0,56)] versus [1 (0, 49)], p = 0.520
• No relationship of LDL-C elevations and plaque

This analysis is on baseline scans and the study is still ongoing for second CCTA completion in our cohort by February of 2024. As always, please continue to work with your doctor.

We’ve had a steady drive in donations to support the upcoming Triad Study being developed right now. Again, we have anonymous donor matching all contributions dollar for dollar up to $100,000.

And we’re happy to report we’ve just now received a very generous contribution of $10,077, putting our total raised (with match) to $73,808.

One again, a very grateful thanks to everyone for their support – keep those donations coming!

We’re excited to announce our Principal Investigator, Dr. Matthew Budoff, will be presenting preliminary data of our Lean Mass Hyper-Responder study (Keto-CTA) on the weekend of December 7-9th at the World Congress on Insulin Resistance, Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease conference in Los Angeles, California.

This is the first prospective study of CT Angiography on a keto diet population with extremely high LDL cholesterol levels, yet low cardiovascular risk factors and confirmed absence of monogenetic FH.

Dr. Budoff will be presenting a new CTA comparison analysis on this cohort against a matched control from the Miami Heart Study (MiHeart). The MiHeart cohort has been closely matched for demographics and risk factors, save LDL cholesterol levels, which average less than half of the Keto-CTA cohort.

We’re happy to announce we’re now on X, formally known as Twitter, under the username, @realCSF

When publishing updates here at our official site, we’ll likewise post to X as well. So feel free to follow us for all coming news and announcements.

While the LMHR study continues to completion, we’ll be initiating this companion study to run in parallel. It will have much in common with the current LMHR Study save a few key differences:

• Control group – We’ll be recruiting a control group for comparison.
• More relaxed criteria – We will likely have a more permissive risk profile, such as allowing lower HDL cholesterol and higher triglycerides.
• Possibly multicenter – This may be conducted across multiple research facilities over a number of major cities, which would make it a bit easier for scheduling and travel on participants.

The good news – operationally, this should be much, much easier the second time around

• Our organization, the Citizen Science Foundation, is already built – a bona fide 501(c)(3) Public Charity – with a 0% admin overhead (save third party services like credit card fee %, hosting, etc)
• We already have a relationship with The Lundquist Institute.
• We’ve already had IRB approval with the LMHR Study – and this time around, we’ll have specific data on safety consideration for a new approval.
• We already have contact information in the hundreds for people who just barely didn’t meet the eligibility of our LMHR study – but who may meet these more relaxed criteria.

However, financially, this will necessarily cost more if we’re including a control group

• Given all our meetings in the last several months, we place the ballpark cost per visit at $1,500 – for a total of two visits, thus $3,000 per participant.
• I’m hoping our minimum raised will give us enough for 40 in each group, which would be around 80 x $3,000 = $240,000.
• But… while that might be closer to our minimum, I’d love if we could actually reach 100 in each group as a stretch goal.

Thankfully, we have $100,000 in matched donations to kick us off

An anonymous donor has come forward to match up to $100,000 of donations coming in for this project. So everyone who contributes to this study endeavor will be matched, dollar for dollar, until we reach that goal.

Consider contributing below, and remember the CSF is a Public Charity, so your donation is tax deductible. As always, thank you for your support!

Hello everyone,

I wanted to let you know we’ve had an extraordinary development.

On February 8th, the Lundquist Institute completed the first visit scans of all 100 participants for the LMHR study. On the 17th Dr. Budoff presented me with the generalized preliminary data to determine if we should publish a preliminary paper. To say this data was compelling would be an understatement.

We’re now moving forward with publication of a preliminary paper as soon as possible. We’re very confident this will be both novel and of enormous interest, particularly in the low carb community.

Importantly, this has completely changed our roadmap for a future study. Originally, we were going to wait until completion of the LMHR study to consider if we should do a confirmatory study. However, this new data not only confirms for me that we should move forward with a new study – I believe we should get started on developing it without delay. We can easily run it concurrently with the LMHR study, each through the Lundquist Institute.

This is all I can report for the moment as each of these endeavors are in development. But hopefully I’ll be able to provide more details on both the preliminary paper and the companion study design over the coming weeks.

Once again, thank you all for your extraordinary support.

Cheers,
Dave

We’re beyond excited to announce the Lean Mass Hyper-Responder has completed enrollment. Needless to say, this has been a long awaited milestone.

We’ve updated our recruitment page to let everyone know we are no longer taking participants for the study.

Again, each of our 100 participants will make a total of two trips to the Lundquist Institute. The first will provide the baseline scan, then they will return a year later for their second scan. Once all participants have completed both scans, we’ll move ahead with the final analysis.

We’re still in the process of completing our funding for this study as travel costs have proven more challenging in the current economic environment. Again, thanks to everyone for all their support!