Skip to main content

Final Paper Topic

By
The gut brain axis has recently been studied and indicated within multiple neurologic and psychiatric disorders. While the biome has traditionally been thought to have its effects limited to the gut and digestive tracts, new research suggests a very different story. The bacterial colonies within our guts appear to play critical roles in neurological functioning, diseases such as Autism, depression, anxiety, and even Parkinson’s. For my opinion review, I am hoping to examine the different ways the biome affects the brain both on a granular mechanistic level, and within different diseases. Ultimately, I hope to pose an argument that this should be an area of focus for further research and potential treatment. Listed below are 5 research articles indicating an interesting relationship between the brain and gut: 


1.     Neufeld, K.M., Kang, N., Bienenstock, J. and Foster, J.A. (2011), Reduced anxiety‐like behavior and central neurochemical change in germ‐free mice. Neurogastroenterology & Motility, 23: 255-e119. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2982.2010.01620.x   

2.     Kelly, J. R., Borre, Y., O' Brien, C., Patterson, E., El Aidy, S., Deane, J., … Dinan, T. G. (2016, November). Transferring the blues: Depression-associated gut microbiota induces neurobehavioural changes in the rat. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27491067

3.     Sampson TR, Debelius JW, Thron T, et al. Gut Microbiota Regulate Motor Deficits and Neuroinflammation in a Model of Parkinson's Disease. Cell. 2016;167(6):1469–1480.e12. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2016.11.018

4.     Vuong HE, Hsiao EY. Emerging Roles for the Gut Microbiome in Autism Spectrum Disorder. Biol Psychiatry. 2017;81(5):411–423. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2016.08.024

      5. Martin CR, Osadchiy V, Kalani A, Mayer EA. The Brain-Gut-Microbiome Axis. Cell Mol      Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2018;6(2):133

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gut-brain axis

By
This weeks papers Reber et al. 2016 and Buffington et al. 2016 present a super interesting look into the gut-brain axis. Regarding both of these papers, it was amazing to see how potent favorable or unfavorable gut microbiome compositions are in affecting neuronal signaling and overall behavior. Reber et al. shows how immunoregulatory immunization with specifically heat killed M.vaccae can serve as a protective factor against chronic subordinate stress induce colotis as well as behavioral symptoms due to chronic stress as such. Interestringly, this paper depleted regulatory T cell activity via the anti CD25 antibody in order to show that the antiinflammatory mechanism induced by m vaccae immunization is depented on the secondary regulatory mechanisms offered by Treg proliferation and signaling. But, when T reg signaling was removed, this did not seem to cause a significant change in behavior . Therefore, this begs the consideration of what othe rmechanisms may be at play in order ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gut-Brain Interactions: Buffington et al. (2016) and Reber et al. (2016)

By
Buffington et al. (2016) and Reber et al. (2016) present quite fascinating approaches to studying the interactions or ‘axis’ between the rodent (and human) gut and brain. As the gut is a primary route for bringing things from the environment into our body, these two studies present very clear and convincing evidence for the relevance and translatable validity of their various hypotheses.   One of the most interesting conclusions to me from Buffington et al. was that co-housing three high-fat diet offspring with just one regular-diet offspring was enough to rescue their social behavior deficits and microbiome profiles. This is remarkable, and I would like to hear more about possible mechanisms for this transfer to actually occur. Although the article mentions that mice do eat each other’s feces to transfer microbiota, could there be a certain “threshold” or level of bacteria needed to observe this phenotype switch? That is, how many more high-fat diet mice could have been house...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gut-Brain Interactions: Buffington et al, Reber et al 2016

By
April 13 Papers (Buffington et. al, Reber et. al) I found this week’s papers to be quite novel in that they both proposed potential treatments for neurodevelopmental or psychiatric disorders that target bacterial or microbial abnormalities and how these give rise to certain behavioral and physical symptoms associated with the disorders. I thought this was a very unusual yet interesting approach, and as I have not previously studied the gut-brain axis, these papers offered me a fresh perspective on researching psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. They were also unconventional in their focus of the physical symptoms that often accompany mental disorders, as this is not something that I have seen many other papers touch upon very much. Particularly, I was surprised by the Reber et al paper’s focus on the link between psychiatric disorders and inflammation in organs other than the brain, such as the colon, and the Buffington et al paper’s description of a relationship between ...
Post a Comment
Read more