Department of Psychiatry, Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital, Guangzhou, 510317, PR China.
School of Pharmacy, Guangdong Pharmaceutical University, Guangzhou, 510006, China.
BMC Psychiatry. 2024 May 27;24(1):398. doi: 10.1186/s12888-024-05824-x.
There are many articles reporting that the component of intestinal microbiota implies a link to anxiety disorders (AD), and the brain-gut axis is also a hot topic in current research. However, the specific relevance between gut microbiota and AD is uncertain. We aimed to investigate causal relationship between gut microbiota and AD by using bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR).
Genetic instrumental variable (IV) for the gut microbiota were obtained from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) involving 18,340 participants. Summary data for AD were derived from the GWAS and included 158,565 cases and 300,995 controls. We applied the inverse variance weighted (IVW) method as the main analysis. Cochran's Q values was computed to evaluate the heterogeneity among IVs. Sensitivity analyses including intercept of MR-Egger method and MR-PRESSO analysis were used to test the horizontal pleiotropy.
We discovered 9 potential connections between bacterial traits on genus level and AD. Utilizing the IVW method, we identified 5 bacterial genera that exhibited a direct correlation with the risk of AD: genus Eubacteriumbrachygroup, genus Coprococcus3, genus Enterorhabdus, genus Oxalobacter, genus Ruminiclostridium6. Additionally, we found 4 bacterial genera that exhibited a negative association with AD: genus Blautia, genus Butyricicoccus, genus Erysipelotrichaceae-UCG003 and genus Parasutterella. The associations were confirmed by the sensitivity analyses.
Our study found a causal relation between parts of the gut microbiota and AD. Further randomized controlled trials are crucial to elucidate the positive effects of probiotics on AD and their particular protection systems.
有许多文章报道肠道微生物群的组成与焦虑障碍（AD）有关，而脑-肠轴也是当前研究的热点。然而，肠道微生物群与 AD 之间的确切相关性尚不确定。我们旨在通过双向孟德尔随机化（MR）来研究肠道微生物群与 AD 之间的因果关系。
从涉及 18340 名参与者的全基因组关联研究（GWAS）中获得了肠道微生物群的遗传工具变量（IV）。AD 的汇总数据来自 GWAS，包括 158565 例病例和 300995 例对照。我们应用逆方差加权（IVW）法作为主要分析。计算 Cochran's Q 值以评估 IV 之间的异质性。使用 MR-Egger 法的截距和 MR-PRESSO 分析进行敏感性分析，以测试水平的偏倚。
我们发现了 9 个在属水平上细菌特征与 AD 之间的潜在联系。利用 IVW 方法，我们确定了与 AD 风险直接相关的 5 个细菌属：属 Eubacteriumbrachygroup、属 Coprococcus3、属 Enterorhabdus、属 Oxalobacter、属 Ruminiclostridium6。此外，我们还发现了 4 个与 AD 呈负相关的细菌属：属 Blautia、属 Butyricicoccus、属 Erysipelotrichaceae-UCG003 和属 Parasutterella。这些关联通过敏感性分析得到了证实。
我们的研究发现了肠道微生物群的某些部分与 AD 之间存在因果关系。进一步的随机对照试验对于阐明益生菌对 AD 的积极影响及其特定保护系统至关重要。
