鄭醫師的部落格

The researchers found predictive relationships between the fecal microbiota and serotonin and cortisol, two compounds in the blood known to be influenced by gut microbiota. Specifically, Bacteroideswas associated with higher serotonin levels, while Ruminococcuspredicted lower concentrations of both serotonin and cortisol. Clostridium and Butyricimonas were not associated strongly with either compound.

Again, Mudd says, the results supported previous findings related to ASD. "Alterations in serum serotonin and cortisol, as well as fecal Bacteroides and Ruminococcus levels, have been described in ASD individuals."

Based on their initial analyses, the researchers wanted to know if there was a three-way relationship between Ruminococcus, cortisol, and NAA. To investigate this further, they used a statistical approach known as "mediation analysis," and found that serum cortisol mediated the relationship between fecal Ruminococcus abundance and brain NAA concentration. In other words, it appears that Ruminococcus communicates with and makes changes to the brain indirectly through cortisol. "This mediation finding is interesting, in that it gives us insight into one way that the gut microbiota may be communicating with the brain. It can be used as a framework for developing future intervention studies which further support this proposed mechanism," Dilger adds.

"Initially, we set out to characterize relationships between the gut microbiota, blood biomarkers, and brain metabolites. But once we looked at the relationships identified in our study, they kept leading us to independently reported findings in the autism literature. We remain cautious and do not want to overstate our findings without support from clinical intervention trials, but we hypothesize that this could be a contributing factor to autism's heterogenous symptoms," Mudd says. Interestingly, in the time since the researchers wrote the paper, other publications have also reported relationships between Ruminococcus and measures of brain development, supporting that this might be a promising area for future research.

Dilger adds, "We admit this approach is limited by only using predictive models. Therefore, the next step is to generate empirical evidence in a clinical setting. So it's important to state that we've only generated a hypothesis here, but it's exciting to consider the progress that may be made in the future based on our evidence in the pre-clinical pig model."