Abstract
ObjectiveMindfulness-based interventions have been widely demonstrated to be effective in reducing stress, alleviating mood disorders, and improving quality of life; however, the underlying mechanisms remained to be fully understood. Along with the advanced research in the microbiota-gut-brain axis, this study aimed to explore the impact of gut microbiota on the effectiveness and responsiveness to mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) among high trait anxiety populations.DesignA standard MBCT was performed among 21 young adults with high trait anxiety. A total of 29 healthy controls were matched for age and sex. The differences in gut microbiota between the two groups were compared. The changes in fecal microbiota and psychological indicators were also investigated before and after the intervention.ResultsCompared with healthy controls, we found markedly decreased bacterial diversity and distinctive clusters among high trait anxiety populations, with significant overgrowth of bacteria such as Streptococcus, Blautia, and Romboutsia, and a decrease in genera such as Faecalibacterium, Coprococcus_3, and Lachnoclostridium. Moreover, MBCT attenuated trait anxiety and depression, improved mindfulness and resilience, and increased the similarity of gut microbiota to that of healthy controls. Notably, a high presence of intestinal Subdoligranulum pre-MBCT was associated with increased responsiveness to MBCT. Decreases in Subdoligranulum post-MBCT were indicative of ameliorated trait anxiety. The tryptophan metabolism pathways were significantly over-represented among high responders compared to low responders.ConclusionThe significantly increased diversity post-MBCT added evidence to gut-brain communication and highlighted the utility of mycobiota-focused strategies for promoting the effectiveness and responsiveness of the MBCT to improve trait anxiety.Clinical Trial Registrationchictr.org.cn, ChiCTR1900028389.
Highlights
As proposed by Spielberger (Spielberger, 1971; Spielberger et al, 2005), trait anxiety has been described as a relatively stable disposition referring to a tendency within individuals to judge a situation as more threatening than it is
To further evaluate whether the high levels of trait anxiety had an effect on the b-diversity, we compared the distance between each pair of samples between the groups; significantly greater unweighted unique fraction metric (UniFrac) distance was observed in the healthy controls (p < 0.001) (Figures 1O, P)
It is clearly separated into two groups, with red and blue colors representing the features in the high trait anxiety group before intervention
Summary
As proposed by Spielberger (Spielberger, 1971; Spielberger et al, 2005), trait anxiety has been described as a relatively stable disposition referring to a tendency within individuals to judge a situation as more threatening than it is. Trait anxiety has been reported to be significantly associated with panic attacks, impaired cognitive functions, harm avoidance, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other psychopathological disorders (Jaiswal et al, 2018; Wang et al, 2018; Hampton, 2019) that eventually result in a reduced quality of life. According to the diathesis-stress model (Morley, 1983), individuals with elevated trait anxiety inherit a genetic tendency toward a mental disorder. Mindfulness-based interventions have gained worldwide popularity because they have been widely demonstrated to be effective in reducing stress (Fjorback et al, 2011; Khoury et al, 2015), alleviating mood disorders such as depression, anxiety (Ma and Teasdale, 2004; Godfrin and van Heeringen, 2010), and bipolar disorders (Perich et al, 2013), relieving pain and improving the quality of life in clinical or non-clinical populations (Bohlmeijer et al, 2010; Chiesa and Serretti, 2011). Long-term mindfulness training effectively changes the cortex thickness and the gray matter density in the brain regions, which are associated with learning, memory, attention processes, and mood regulations (Wang et al, 2018; Young et al, 2018)
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