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Original Article: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19931-2
- Depression is a mental disorder that causes a constant feeling of sadness and loss of interest.
- Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide.
- Recent studies show that mood disorders are associated with the changes of the intestinal bacteria.
- Mice were exposed to mild stressors and displayed phenotypic alterations.
- These phenotypic alterations could be transferred to a naïve recipient mice by fecal microbiota transplantation.
- The cellular and behavioral changes observed in the recipient mice were accompanied by a decrease of some neural signaling.
- The negative effects of the transferred microbiota were reduced by enhancing the neural signaling or by complementation with of a strain of good bacteria.
- The findings provide evidence about the relationship between chronic stress, diet, and intestinal bacteria and how it contributes to despair behavior via neural signaling.
Sources:
Chevalier, G., Siopi, E., Guenin-Macé, L. et al. Effect of gut microbiota on depressive-like behaviors in mice is mediated by the endocannabinoid system. Nat Commun 11, 6363 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19931-2
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/symptoms-causes/syc-20356007