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Gut microbiota dysbiosis in depressed women: The association of symptom severity and microbiota function
Although the link between irregular gut microbiome composition and depression is established, this 2021 study aims to address the limited data on the composition and functional capacity of the gut microbiota among depressed women. Firstly, stool samples were taken from 62 female patients with major depressive disorder and 46 healthy controls. The participants were also assessed on psychiatric symptoms, as well as psychological, social, and professional functioning. The abundance of Phylum Bacteroidetes, proteobacteria, and Fusobacteria were higher in patients with major depressive disorder than the healthy controls. But the control group were found to have consistently greater populations of the Firmicutes and Actinobacteria phyla. The author addresses the limitations of this study, including the relatively small sample size analyzed by shotgun metagenomic sequencing (20 from patient group; 21 from healthy controls). Moreover, the samples were collected only at baseline, making it difficult to determine a causal link between changes in gut microbiota compositions and disease remission. Overall, this study suggests that altered gut microbial metabolites may contribute to the pathogenesis of major depressive disorder in women. Furthermore, the gut microbiota-based biomarkers used in this experiment may be helpful in its diagnosis. [NPID: gut microbiome, gut microbiota, depression, women, psychology, functioning, psychiatric, depression, MDD, major depressive disorder]
Year: 2021
