Gut microbiota alteration and modulation in psychiatric disorders: Current evidence on fecal microbiota transplantation

Jan 26, 2021Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology & biological psychiatry

Changes in gut bacteria and their adjustment in mental health conditions: What we know about fecal microbiota transplants

AI simplified

Gut-Brain Axis on OpenScience ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Abstract

Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) has shown effectiveness in enhancing psychiatric-like disturbances such as depression and anxiety in recipient animals.

Gut microbiota, composed mainly of bacteria, co-evolved with humans and plays critical roles in physiology and disease.
Dysbiosis, or an imbalanced gut microbiota, is strongly associated with the onset of psychiatric disorders by affecting neurodevelopment and mood.
The microbiota-gut-brain axis suggests a complex interaction between the gut microbiota, the intestine, and the central nervous system.
FMT is utilized to modulate gut microbiota and has been associated with both inducing dysbiosis for research and healing dysbiosis-related mental disorders.
Current evidence on the benefits of FMT for psychiatric conditions is limited by procedural inconsistencies and a lack of extensive human studies.

AI simplified

The micro-organisms residing within the gastrointestinal tract, namely gut microbiota, form a dynamic population proper of each individual, mostly composed by bacteria which co-evolved symbiotically with human species. The advances of culture-independent techniques allowed the understanding of the multiple functions of the gut microbiota in human physiology and disease, the latter often recognising a predisposing condition in an imbalanced intestinal microbial ecosystem (dysbiosis). A complex mutual interconnection between the central nervous system (CNS), the intestine and the gut microbiota, known as "microbiota-gut-brain axis", has been hypothesized to play a pivotal role in maintaining central and peripheral functions, as well as mental health. Thus, dysbiosis with specific microbiota imbalances seems to be strongly associated with the onset psychiatric disorders by altering neurodevelopment, enhancing neurodegeneration, affecting behaviour and mood. Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) consists of transferring the fecal matter from a donor into the gastrointestinal tract of a recipient, and it is used to quickly modulate the gut microbiota. This review focuses on the uses of FMT in psychiatric disorders. FMT has been used to induce dysbiosis and to study the disease development, or to heal dysbiosis-related mental disorders. Overall, FMT of impaired microbiota resulted effective in enhancing psychiatric-like disturbances (mainly depression and anxiety) in recipient animals, plausibly by impairing immune system, inflammatory and metabolic pathways, neurochemical processes and neuro-transmission. On the other side, preclinical and clinical data suggest that reversing or mitigating dysbiosis seems a promising strategy to restore behavioural impairments or to obtain psychiatric symptom relief. However, current evidence is limited by the lack of procedural standardization, the paucity of human studies in the vastity of psychiatric conditions and the need of a microbiota-targeted donor-recipient matching.

Full Text

Full text is available at the source.

View full text (XML) ↗View full text ↗

Gut microbiota alteration and modulation in psychiatric disorders: Current evidence on fecal microbiota transplantation

Abstract

Full Text

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

what lands in your inbox each week:

Recent issues from the gut-brain axis brief

Abstract

Full Text

Related papers

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

what lands in your inbox each week:

Recent issues from the gut-brain axis brief