1. Relative abundance of Akkermansia spp. and other bacterial phylotypes correlates with anxiety- and depressive-like behavior following social defeat in mice
- Author
-
Michael D. Kritzer, Nourhan M. Elsayed, Douglas E. Williamson, Kara D. McGaughey, Tulay Yilmaz-Swenson, Ramona M. Rodriguiz, Jeffrey Roach, Angel V. Peterchev, Dianne A. Cruz, and William C. Wetsel
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Male ,Science ,Gut flora ,Article ,Social defeat ,Pathogenesis ,03 medical and health sciences ,Mice ,0302 clinical medicine ,Verrucomicrobia ,RNA, Ribosomal, 16S ,medicine ,Animals ,Relative species abundance ,Depression (differential diagnoses) ,Genetics ,Multidisciplinary ,biology ,Behavior, Animal ,Depression ,Akkermansia ,biology.organism_classification ,Anxiety Disorders ,Gastrointestinal Microbiome ,030104 developmental biology ,Metagenomics ,Medicine ,Anxiety ,Metagenome ,medicine.symptom ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,Stress, Psychological - Abstract
As discussion of stress and stress-related disorders rapidly extends beyond the brain, gut microbiota have emerged as a promising contributor to individual differences in the risk of illness, disease course, and treatment response. Here, we employed chronic mild social defeat stress and 16S rRNA gene metagenomic sequencing to investigate the role of microbial composition in mediating anxiety- and depressive-like behavior. In socially defeated animals, we found significant reductions in the overall diversity and relative abundances of numerous bacterial genera, including Akkermansia spp., that positively correlated with behavioral metrics of both anxiety and depression. Functional analyses predicted a reduced frequency of signaling molecule pathways, including G-protein-coupled receptors, in defeated animals. Collectively, our data suggest that shifts in microbial composition may play a role in the pathogenesis of anxiety and depression.
- Published
- 2019