Research Progress on Correlation between Gut Microbiota and Depression
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Abstract:
Depression is a common mental illness that is often linked to sex, genetics, and environmental or psychological causes. The gut microbiota plays an important role in emotional state and behavioral cognition by participating in many forms of the physiological regulation of the human body. Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes are the dominant phyla in healthy gut microbiota; the richness and diversity of the gut microbiota are substantially lower in patients with depression than those in healthy people. The gut microbiota directly or indirectly communicates with the brain through neural, immune, and metabolic pathways, and a strong correlation exists between changes in the gut microbiota and depression. Therefore, maintaining a healthy gut microbiome is extremely important for brain health. This study mainly explored the possible pathogenesis of depression based on the gut–brain axis, and the effects of gut microbiota on depression were discussed from four aspects: affecting monoamine neurotransmitter production, changing the plasticity of the nervous system, inducing changes in the levels of inflammatory factors, and causing dysfunction of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. In addition, several possible methods of regulating the gut microbiota to intervene in depression were summarized to provide new ideas for the treatment of depression.
