Effects of ‘Healthy’ Fecal Microbiota Transplantation against the Deterioration of Depression in Fawn-Hooded Rats
Bing Hu, Promi Das, Xianglin Lv, Meng Shi, Jiye Aa, Kun Wang, Liping Duan, Jack A. Gilbert, Yong Nie, Xiao‐Lei Wu
Abstract
Depression is a chronic, recurrent mental disease, which could make the patients commit suicide in severe cases. Considering that gut microbiome dysbiosis could cause depressive symptoms in animals through the MGB axis, the modification of gut microbiota is expected to be a potential therapy for depression, but the daily administration of probiotics is invalid or transient. In this study, we demonstrated that the gut microbiome transferred from a healthy rat model to a depressive rat model could regulate the recipient's neurobiology and behavior via the systematic alternation of the depressive gut microbiota followed by the serum and hippocampal metabolism. These results underline the significance of understanding the impact of gut microbiota on mental disorders and suggest that 'healthy' microbiota transplantation with the function to solve the host's cerebral inflammation may serve as a novel therapeutic strategy for depression.