Gut microbiota can regulate social behaviors of mice via stress response mechanisms in the brain, which might shed new light on the treatment of psychiatric disorders, a study published by Taiwanese and US researchers in the journal Nature said.
Social behaviors are related to survival and reproduction, while one common social activity among mice is that one would smell another’s anus or whiskers, showing curiosity, National Cheng Kung University Department of Physiology assistant professor Wu Wei-li (吳偉立), the study’s lead author, told an online news conference.
Previous studies had explored the connections between mice’s gut microbiota and their social activities, but the gut-brain connections that regulate their social behaviors are unclear, Wu said.
Their experiments found that germ-free mice and mice whose intestinal microbiota were restricted appeared to be socially inactive, while their levels of corticosterone, a stress hormone, were higher, he said.
When researchers inhibited the mice’s corticosterone through drugs or by removing the mice’s adrenal glands, the germ-free mice became more socially active, he added.
When they stimulated normal mice’s neurons that regulate adrenaline or other stress responses, their social behaviors declined, he said.
The team also identified a specific gut bacterial species, Enterococcus faecalis, that promoted social activity and reduced stress hormones in mice, Wu said.
Other studies have suggested that the bacteria are found in most humans, but their level is lower in those who have mental disorders, he said.
The study, titled “Microbiota regulate social behaviour via stress response neurons in the brain,” was published in the journal Nature on June 30. The research project was partly funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST).
The paper also involved contributions from teams led by California Institute of Technology professors Sarkis Mazmanian, Rustem Ismagilov and Viviana Gradinaru, Wu said.
They spent more than two years defending their submission in response to queries from the journal’s reviewers, Wu said.
The study shows that gut microbiota influences not only health, but also neural and social activities, MOST Department of Life Sciences Director-General Chen Hong-chen (陳鴻震) said, expressing the hope that their findings would help advance precision medicine on related diseases.
There is a long way to go before their research model can be applied to humans, but their findings might inspire some new ways of thinking for similar research, he said.
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