Cargill R&D Centre Europe, Vilvoorde, Belgium.
International Life Sciences Institute, European Branch, Brussels, Belgium.
Cell Mol Life Sci. 2022 Jan 19;79(2):80. doi: 10.1007/s00018-021-04060-w.
The gut and brain link via various metabolic and signalling pathways, each with the potential to influence mental, brain and cognitive health. Over the past decade, the involvement of the gut microbiota in gut-brain communication has become the focus of increased scientific interest, establishing the microbiota-gut-brain axis as a field of research. There is a growing number of association studies exploring the gut microbiota's possible role in memory, learning, anxiety, stress, neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. Consequently, attention is now turning to how the microbiota can become the target of nutritional and therapeutic strategies for improved brain health and well-being. However, while such strategies that target the gut microbiota to influence brain health and function are currently under development with varying levels of success, still very little is yet known about the triggers and mechanisms underlying the gut microbiota's apparent influence on cognitive or brain function and most evidence comes from pre-clinical studies rather than well controlled clinical trials/investigations. Filling the knowledge gaps requires establishing a standardised methodology for human studies, including strong guidance for specific focus areas of the microbiota-gut-brain axis, the need for more extensive biological sample analyses, and identification of relevant biomarkers. Other urgent requirements are new advanced models for in vitro and in vivo studies of relevant mechanisms, and a greater focus on omics technologies with supporting bioinformatics resources (training, tools) to efficiently translate study findings, as well as the identification of relevant targets in study populations. The key to building a validated evidence base rely on increasing knowledge sharing and multi-disciplinary collaborations, along with continued public-private funding support. This will allow microbiota-gut-brain axis research to move to its next phase so we can identify realistic opportunities to modulate the microbiota for better brain health.
肠道和大脑通过各种代谢和信号通路相互连接，每一种通路都有可能影响精神、大脑和认知健康。在过去的十年中，肠道微生物群在肠道-大脑通讯中的作用引起了科学界越来越多的兴趣，确立了微生物群-肠道-大脑轴作为一个研究领域。越来越多的关联研究探索了肠道微生物群在记忆、学习、焦虑、压力、神经发育和神经退行性疾病中的可能作用。因此，人们现在开始关注微生物群如何成为改善大脑健康和幸福感的营养和治疗策略的目标。然而，虽然针对肠道微生物群影响大脑健康和功能的策略目前正在开发中，并取得了不同程度的成功，但我们对肠道微生物群对认知或大脑功能的明显影响的触发因素和机制知之甚少，而且大多数证据来自临床前研究，而不是经过严格控制的临床试验/调查。填补知识空白需要建立人类研究的标准化方法，包括对微生物群-肠道-大脑轴的特定重点领域的强有力指导，对更广泛的生物样本分析的需求，以及识别相关生物标志物。其他紧迫的要求是为相关机制的体外和体内研究提供新的先进模型，以及更加关注具有支持性生物信息学资源（培训、工具）的组学技术，以有效地转化研究结果，以及在研究人群中识别相关目标。建立经过验证的证据基础的关键在于增加知识共享和多学科合作，以及持续的公私资金支持。这将使肠道-大脑轴研究进入下一阶段，从而使我们能够确定调节微生物群以改善大脑健康的现实机会。
