Abstract
Currently, there is keen interest in the development of alternative therapies in the treatment of depression. Given the explosion of research focused on the microbiota-gut-brain axis, consideration has turned to the potential of certain probiotics to improve patient outcomes for those suffering from mood disorders. Here we examine the abilities of a known antidepressant, fluoxetine, and the probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus JB-1™, to attenuate responses to two established criteria for depressive-like behavior in animal models, the tail suspension test (TST) and the corticosterone response to an acute restraint stressor. We examine two different strains of mice known to differ in the extent to which they express both anxiety-like behavior and measures of despair—BALB/c and Swiss Webster—with respectively high and normal behavioral phenotypes for each. While adult male BALB/c mice responded with increased antidepressive-like behavior to both fluoxetine and L. rhamnosus JB-1 in both the TST and the corticosterone stress response, SW mice did not respond to either treatment as compared to controls. These findings highlight the importance of investigating putative antidepressants in mouse strains known to express face validity for some markers of depression. Clinical studies examining the activity of L. rhamnosus JB-1 in patients suffering from mood disorders are warranted, as well as further pre-clinical work examining how interactions between host genotype and intestinal microbial alterations may impact behavioral responses. This study adds to the literature supporting the possibility that modifying the intestinal microbiota via probiotics represents a promising potential therapeutic breakthrough in the treatment of psychiatric disease.
Highlights
There is intense interest in the development of alternative therapies for the treatment of psychiatric illness
One-way ANOVA showed a main effect for treatment [F(2, 41) = 4.072, p = 0.0244] in BALB/c mice and corrected post-hoc analyses demonstrated that feeding JB-1 for 28 days in drinking water decreased depressive-like behavior in the TST as compared to control mice (p = 0.0396)
Feeding L. rhamnosus JB-1 or Fluoxetine to BALB/c Mice Attenuates Plasma Corticosterone and Hastens Recovery In BALB/c mice, a two-way repeated measures ANOVA showed a main effect for time [F(4, 132) = 185.8, p = 0.0001], and a significant interaction [F(8, 132) = 4.83, p = 0.0001] but no main effect for treatment [F(2, 33) = 2.486, p = 0.0987] in plasma corticosterone levels after an acute restraint stress
Summary
There is intense interest in the development of alternative therapies for the treatment of psychiatric illness. The microbiota-gut-brain axis is a bi-directional axis of communication that is mediated by the endocrine, immune and neural systems (Berthoud, 2008; El Aidy et al, 2014; Mayer et al, 2015) Initial interest in this axis was largely driven by attempts to understand the pathogenesis of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a functional bowel disorder in patients that is frequently comorbid with mood disorders such as anxiety and depression (Whitehead et al, 2002). Probiotics are currently used in the successful treatment of IBS symptoms and there is question as to whether their efficacy is related to improvements in bowel and/or brain function (Ford et al, 2014; Pinto-Sanchez et al, 2017; Ait-Belgnaoui et al, 2018). Given that treatment was provided to an already healthy volunteer population as opposed to a more vulnerable clinical cohort, we sought to further examine this in mice
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