Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.
Neurogastroenterol Motil. 2013 Sep;25(9):713-9. doi: 10.1111/nmo.12198.
There is a growing awareness of the potential for microbiota to influence gut-brain communication in health and disease. A variety of strategies have been used to study the impact of the microbiota on brain function and these include antibiotic use, probiotic treatments, fecal microbiota transplantation, gastrointestinal infection studies, and germ-free studies. All of these approaches provide evidence to support the view that the microbiota can influence brain chemistry and consequently behavior. Efforts are now turning to investigate the role of microbiota in animal models of psychopathology. Animal models of depression are thus essential in studying the complex interplay between the microbiota and brain. Recent studies published in this Journal and elsewhere demonstrate that there is a distinct perturbation of the composition of gut microbiota in animal models of depression and chronic stress. This has direct implications for the development of psychobiotic-based therapeutic strategies for psychiatric disorders. Moreover, given that affective co-morbidities, such as major depression and anxiety states, are common in patients presenting with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), it may have implications for functional bowel disorders also. Further studies require appropriately phenotyped patients with depression and/or IBS using a judicious use of techniques including functional imaging and in depth microbial pyrosequencing.
人们越来越意识到微生物组在健康和疾病中影响肠道-大脑通讯的潜力。已经使用了各种策略来研究微生物组对大脑功能的影响，这些策略包括使用抗生素、益生菌治疗、粪便微生物群移植、胃肠道感染研究和无菌研究。所有这些方法都提供了证据支持微生物组可以影响大脑化学物质，从而影响行为的观点。目前，人们正在努力研究微生物组在精神病理学动物模型中的作用。因此，抑郁动物模型对于研究微生物组和大脑之间的复杂相互作用至关重要。最近在本杂志和其他地方发表的研究表明，在抑郁和慢性应激的动物模型中，肠道微生物组的组成存在明显的紊乱。这对开发基于益生菌的精神疾病治疗策略有直接影响。此外，鉴于情感共病，如抑郁症和焦虑状态，在出现肠易激综合征（IBS）的患者中很常见，因此它也可能对功能性肠病有影响。需要进一步的研究，使用包括功能成像和深入微生物 pyrosequencing 在内的技术，对有抑郁和/或 IBS 的适当表型患者进行研究。
