Abstract
Depression and anxiety are devastating disorders. Understanding the mechanisms that underlie the development of depression and anxiety can provide new hints on novel treatments and preventive strategies. Here, we summarize the latest findings reporting the novel roles of gut microbiota and microRNAs (miRNAs) in the pathophysiology of depression and anxiety. The crosstalk between gut microbiota and the brain has been reported to contribute to these pathologies. It is currently known that some miRNAs can regulate bacterial growth and gene transcription while also modulate the gut microbiota composition, suggesting the importance of miRNAs in gut and brain health. Treatment and prevention strategies for neuropsychiatric diseases, such as physical exercise, diet, and probiotics, can modulate the gut microbiota composition and miRNAs expressions. Nonetheless, there are critical questions to be addressed to understand further the mechanisms involved in the interaction between the gut microbiota and miRNAs in the brain. This review summarizes the recent findings of the potential roles of microbiota and miRNA on the neuropathology of depression and anxiety, and its potential as treatment strategies.
Highlights
MicroRNAs are single-stranded non-coding RNAs, with an average of 22 nucleotides in length, which function as the posttranscriptional regulators of gene expression, primarily through translational repression (Ha and Kim, 2014)
Changes in the gut microbiota composition may MicroRNA and Microbiota in Depression and Anxiety eventually contribute to the pathogeneses of neuropsychiatric disorders
These results suggest that anxiety may arise from perturbations in the gut microbiota caused by external conditions
Summary
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are single-stranded non-coding RNAs, with an average of 22 nucleotides in length, which function as the posttranscriptional regulators of gene expression, primarily through translational repression (Ha and Kim, 2014). Rodent studies have demonstrated that intestinal microbiota disruption induced by stress (Bharwani et al, 2017), or high-fat diet (Bruce-Keller et al, 2017), or antibiotics (Park et al, 2021) leads to anxiety-like behavior, which can be restored to normal by probiotic administration, including Escherichia coli (Park et al, 2021) and B. longum (Pinto-Sanchez et al, 2017) These results suggest that anxiety may arise from perturbations in the gut microbiota caused by external conditions. Several studies have shown that stress simulates NF-κB activation and monocyte migration to the intestine (Jang et al, 2018) and improves the density of Aspergillus and E. coli in the gut microbiota and increases fecal and serum LPS levels in rodents with anxiety-like behavior (Frankiensztajn et al, 2020). IBS presents high comorbidity with depression and anxiety
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