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Diet and exercise orthogonally alter the gut microbiome and reveal independent associations with anxiety and cognition
This 2014 study was conducted to find out whether behavioral problems caused by high-fat diets such as anxiety and cognitive impairment can be exercised away, as suggested by certain studies. In this animal-model experiment, mice were examined under several conditions (fed a normal diet, normal diet with exercise, fed a high-fat diet, high-fat diet plus exercise). The mice given the high-fat diet had strong anxiety phenotypes, which were not affected by exercise. Although exercise increased the cognitive ability of the mice, the high-fat diet did not influence this. Since the gut microbiome is important in shaping the host state, the study also used rRNA tag sequencing to produce a gut microbiota profile for each mouse. The high-fat diet was found to significantly reshape the gut microbial community, supporting the findings of previous studies. Exercise alone influenced the gut microbiome to almost the same extent as diet but these changes were statistically independent. Therefore, aspects of behavior and the gut microbiome are both affected by diet and exercise but in unrelated ways. Furthermore, there was a correlation between specific bacterial abundances with measures of anxiety or cognition. This finding suggests that certain gut microbes can be used as biomarkers for anxiety or cognition, or even targeted for therapy. [NPID: gut microbiome, exercise, diet, anxiety, behavior, cognition, high-fat diet]
Year: 2014
