Posted by Hugh on May 25, 2020, at 13:11:57
The allure is simple: Drug development for neuropsychiatric disorders has lagged for decades, and many existing drugs don't work for all patients and cause unwanted side effects. A growing number of researchers see a promising alternative in microbe-based treatments, or "psychobiotics," a term coined by neuropharmacologist John Cryan and psychiatrist Ted Dinan, both at University College Cork. "This is a really young and really exciting field with a huge amount of potential," says Natalia Palacios, an epidemiologist at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, who is looking into connections between gut microbes and Parkinson's disease.
Researchers have also noticed an increase in depression in people taking antibiotics -- but not antiviral or antifungal medications that leave gut bacteria unharmed. Last year, Jeroen Raes, a microbiologist at the Catholic University of Leuven, and colleagues analyzed the health records of two groups -- one Belgian, one Dutch -- of more than 1000 people participating in surveys of their types of gut bacteria. People with depression had deficits of the same two bacterial species, the authors reported in April 2019 in Nature Microbiology.
Complete article:
poster:Hugh
thread:1110321
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20200511/msgs/1110321.html