Some forms of depression could be linked to the inflammatory phenomenon generated by intestinal microbes.
- The abundance of two intestinal bacteria is linked to psychiatric illnesses including depression
- This link between intestinal bacteria and cerebral or psychic disorders is still insufficient to constitute a new way of treating depression.
The links between our intestine, our “second brain”, and our cerebral functioning are confirmed. To the point of imagining that the microbes in our digestive system could be the cause of depression? That’s what advances a study published in the journal Science conducted on several thousand Finns and which would have made it possible to identify “potential culprits involved in certain forms of depression”.
In 2008, researchers had already established a link between the Morganella bacterium and depression through the immune response it triggered. In a new study published in Nature Genetics, the abundance of this bacterium and another called Klebsellia is shown to be linked to psychiatric illnesses such as depression.
The impact of certain gut microbes on mood
“This seems to support the hypothesis that inflammation caused by certain gut microbes can affect mood,” remarked in Courrier International Jack Gibert, a microbial ecology specialist at the University of California who did not participated in this work.
Fighting against the diseases caused by these microbes would therefore be a new way to treat depression and other psychiatric illnesses? Not sure, at least not yet. First, because there are many forms of depression and certainly as many factors including bacteria can be involved in their manifestation. Then because it is “difficult to determine how to get rid of Morganella to relieve people suffering from depression,” recognize the scientists in the Science article. “The holy grail would be to identify a microbe whose absence plays a role in depression that we could then inoculate patients,” explains another microbiome specialist, Gerard Clarke.
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