Summary: New research has revealed that gut microbes are essential for controlling stress by interacting with daily patterns, opening up the development of microbiome-based treatments for mental health.
Researchers discovered that the HPA axis, the body’s main stress reaction system, may cause time-specific increases in pressure responses as a result of the depletion of some gut bacteria. Limosilactobacillus reuteri, a particular strain, was discovered to be important for regulating daytime stress hormone levels.
This study emphasizes the value of maintaining a healthy bacteria to help mental well-being in a fast-paced world, despite the possibility of treating stress-related problems. By better understanding these microbiome-circadian relationships, experts are closer to developing treatment aimed at improving mental heath through gut microbes.
Important Information:
- Certain gut microbes interact with the brain’s circadian rhythms to control stress responses.
- These bacteria are exaggerated when they are depleted, leading to heightened tension actions at particular times of day.
- The development of new stress and anxiety treatments may involve the targeted gut microbes.
Origin: UCC
A groundbreaking study has discovered how crucially interconnected gut microbiotes are in governing stress actions by interacting with the body’s circadian rhythms.
The findings make it possible to develop novel microbial-based treatments that may assist people with better managing stress-related mental health conditions like anxiety and depression, which are frequently linked to changes in daily and sleep cycles.
This ground-breaking study from University College Cork and APC Microbiome Ireland, a Research Ireland Centre, provides conclusive proof that the gut’s billions of pathogens control the body’s physiological responses to tension in a time-dependent method, allowing for the development of novel therapeutic approaches targeting the gut-brain plane.
Published in Cell Metabolism, this study shines a spotlight on the intricate relationship between the gut microbiota and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal ( HPA ) axis, the body’s central stress response system.
The study demonstrates that a lack of gut bacteria causes an HPA-axis hyperactivation in a time-of-day particular manner, which in addition to changes to the brain’s stress and circadian responding regions, causes altered stress tolerance throughout the day.
The study further identifies specific gut bacteria, including a Lactobacillus strain  , ( Limosilactobacillus reuteri), as key influencers of this circadian-regulated stress mechanism.  ,
L. reuteri , emerged as a candidate strain that modulates glucocorticoid secretion ( stress hormones ), linking the microbiota’s natural diurnal oscillations with altered stress responsiveness.
This ground-breaking finding opens up new avenues for psychobiotic treatments that aim to improve mental health outcomes by focusing on gut bacteria that affect tension rules.
Influence and Repercussions
This study highlights the importance of the gut microbiota in maintaining the body’s normal stress-regulation operations as current habits extremely disrupt circadian rhythms through irregular sleep patterns, high stress, and poor nutrition.
Our research has identified an important link between the gut microbiota and how the brain responds to stress in a specific way, according to Principal Investigator Professor John Cryan.
The gut microbiome not only regulates metabolism and digestion; it also controls how we respond to stress, and it operates in accordance with a precise circadian rhythm.
” These findings underscore the importance of maintaining a healthy microbiome, particularly for those living in today’s stressful and fast-paced environment”.
First author , Dr Gabriel Tofani , added” Our findings underscore the importance of not only the gut microbiota composition, but also how gut microbes change across the day.
We are assisting in understanding how the gut bacteria affect how the body responds to stress throughout the day by demonstrating how the microbiota influence how our responses to the environment are shaped.
” Our work also shows that examining this connection between the circadian rhythms and the gut microbiota will be crucial in the development of microbiota-based treatments for stress-related disorders in the future,” says our author.
According to Professor Paul Ross, Director of APC Microbiome Ireland,” This study is a significant step forward in our understanding of how the microbiome influences our mental health.”  ,
This study provides important insight into how targeting specific bacteria may help manage or even prevent stress-related conditions because we at APC are committed to unraveling the many ways our gut microbiome affect human health.
This study brings us one step closer to achieving the stated goal of improving mental health through microbiome-based interventions.
The study was conducted at University College Cork’s APC, a world leader in microbiome research. The gut-brain axis research team led by Professor Cryan has long been at the forefront of this study, and this latest discovery adds to the growing body of research that suggests gut bacteria have profound effects on both physical and mental health.
About this news item about the stress and microbiome research
Author: Joe Leogue
Source: UCC
Contact: Joe Leogue – UCC
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
By John Cryan et al.,” The circadian system controls stress response, and the gut microbiota does so..” Cell Metabolism
Abstract
The circadian system controls stress response, and the gut microbiota does so.
Stress and circadian systems are interconnected through the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal ( HPA ) axis to maintain responses to external stimuli. The mechanisms behind how these signals are planned remain unexplored.
Here, we uncover the gut microbiota as a regulator of HPA-axis rhythmicity. Throughout the day, microbial depletion disrupts the hippocampus and amygdala’s stress-responding pathways in the brain transcriptome and metabolome.
This causes a brain’s circadian pacemaker to be dysregulated, which causes a disturbed glucocorticoid rhythm. The resulting hyper-activation of the HPA axis at the sleep/wake transition drives time-of-day-specific impairments of the stress response and stress-sensitive behaviors.
Finally, microbiota transplantation confirmed that diurnal oscillations of gut microbes underlie altered glucocorticoid secretion and that , L.  , reuteri , is a candidate strain for such effects.
Our research provides compelling evidence that the microbiota regulates stress responsiveness circadianally and is required to adapt to stressors throughout the day.
