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The microbes that inhabit our intestines seem to have an influence on our mental health, although, for the moment, this impact has been studied more in animals than in humans. It has been observed, for example, that these animals developed symptoms of the disease when they injected droppings of depressed men into rats. In humans, it was found that altering the intestinal ecosystem could reduce anxiety states, but lacked information about what could be done with more serious illnesses.
On Monday, a team led by Jeroen Raes of the Flemish Institute of Biotechnology, Belgium, publishes an badysis linking depression to the absence of certain types of bacteria, suggesting that many of them could produce compounds that could affect our mental state.
In his work, published in the journal Nature Microbiology the authors report how they obtained information on diagnoses of depression and microbiomes collected in the feces of 1,054 people participating in the Flemish project. intestinal flora. In their badysis, they observed that two types of bacteria, Coprococcus and Dialister were rare in people with depression.
"The relationship between intestinal microbial metabolism and mental health is a controversial topic in microbiome research," Raes said in a statement from his institution. "The notion that metabolites [produzidos por estes micróbios] can interact with our brain, and therefore affect our behavior and feelings, is intriguing, but communication between the gut microbiome and the brain has already been explored primarily in animal models, much less advanced humans. "
In this work, the authors also badyzed the compounds likely to produce microbes capable of interacting with our nervous system, and crossed this information with genomic sequences. organisms present in the feces of infected people. depression and healthy individuals. They discovered that the ability of certain microorganisms to produce DOPAC, one of the metabolites of dopamine, was badociated with a better mental state.
Anxiety and depression problems were detected in people with gastrointestinal disorders
. Raes has been searching for years for the relationship between the presence of certain bacteria and their effects on health. In previous studies, they found that those who regularly ate yogurt had more diverse intestinal bacterial ecosystems, which was also the case with wine and coffee consumption. The reverse is produced with the consumption of whole milk and overeating. In another of the lines of interest for the study of the microbiome, we began to highlight relationships between heart disease and cancer and the presence or absence of certain bacteria.
For now, we know more accurately diet and intestinal health, but substances produced by certain bacteria can affect inflammation levels, which also affects the immune system. Microbes are in a way a mechanism that connects different systems of the body. Anxiety problems or depression have been particularly observed in people with gastrointestinal disorders, such as irritable bowel syndrome, and it is common for mental and digestive disorders to occur simultaneously. In another area of research that may help to understand Parkinson's disease, some studies have shown that this condition is related to increased intestinal transit time.
The field of study of the microbiome, and in particular its ability to act on it to improve health, is still in its infancy. Also Monday, in Nature Biotechnology an international team of scientists published the discovery of 100 new species of bacteria found in healthy intestines. Like when you want to modify an ecosystem, moving a species can have adverse effects on your balance, and it seems that to do it effectively, there is still a lot to understand about these microscopic inhabitants, which account for about 2% of our total population. weight. 19659010]
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