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Gut feeling: Randomized controlled trials of probiotics for the treatment of clinical depression: Systematic review and meta-analysis
Since probiotics have been increasingly suggested to be capable of reducing stress and anxiety and alleviating mood, the purpose of this 2019 systematic review and meta-analysis was to present all published evidence on probiotics’ efficacy as a treatment for depression in clinically depressed individuals. Randomized controlled trials involving the use of probiotics as either supplementary or standalone treatment in depressive patients were considered eligible for this systematic review. Information on sample characteristics, treatment effectiveness, tolerability and risk of bias were then extracted from the eligible studies. Nikolova et al. (2019) gathered data on 229 patients, taken from the 3 studies that met the inclusion criteria – two of which provided probiotics as part of supplementary therapy and one as a standalone treatment for depression. When this standalone treatment study was removed from the meta-analysis due to clinical heterogeneity, this revealed probiotics’ positive impact on overall depressive symptoms (standardized mean difference = 1.371, 95% confidence interval 0.130-2.613). Although additional studies will be required, and the potential mechanisms explored, the results of this meta-analysis imply probiotics may have beneficial effects on depressive symptoms when given as adjuvant therapy with antidepressants. [NPID: probiotics, gut-brain axis, gut microbiota, gut bacteria, microbiota, gut microbiome, stress, prebiotics, anxiety, depression]
Year: 2019
