This study explores alternative methods to detect depression and its link to gut microbiota. Depression is one of the most poorly understood diseases due to its evasive pathogenesis. According to a report by WHO, an estimated 3.8% of the global population is affected, including 5% among adults and 5.7% among individuals older than 60 years, which counts for approximately 280 million people. At its worst, depression leads to suicide, and over 7,00,000 deaths every year. Suicide is the fourth leading cause of death among adults who are 15-29-year-olds.Â
Previous research focused on the emergence of the gut microbiota, which has been the key regulator of the gut-brain axis. It may influence our brain activity and behavior. Another study also suggests that gut microbiome might have an impact on the neurobiological aspects of depression.
In the former study, they investigated the relation of fecal microbiome and its composition with depressive symptoms in 1,054 participants from the Rotterdam cohort — a long-term population-based medical study, first constituted in 1990 and then cross-analyzed and validated its findings with an additional 1,539 participants from the Healthy Life in an Urban Setting (HELIUS) cohort, that aims to investigate the biological, psychological and social causes of the unequal burden of disease among ethnic groups globally.
After the exclusion of individuals using antidepressants and non-European subjects, 1,054 samples from RS and 1,539 samples from the HELIUS study were included in the analyses.
Factors influencing gut microbiota’s composition
- Influences in early life such as microbial infection, mode of birth delivery, use of antibiotic medications, nutritional providence, environmental factors, and host genetics. Another aspect of this is that microbial diversity diminishes with aging.
- Stress alone can significantly impact the intestinal gut-brain axis at all stages of life. Recently many works has implicated the role of gut microbiota in brain conditions including autism, anxiety, obesity, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.
Studying the relationship between the gut microbiota’s and ethnicities is significant at many levels in a different paper, as people from different marginalized communities have differential access to healthcare resources, resulting in potentially diverse health conditions and inequality which needs to be addressed.
Researchers who were studying the HELIUS cohort also observed how depressive symptoms and gut microbial’s composition are linked. They observed that this association was not only largely indifferent to the ethnic identities, but they also face the risk of depression from historically biological angle.
This study also implies that the gut microbial composition affected patients irrespective of their ethnicity and the taxa associated with depression and these symptoms are common in all of them. The study further amplifies the role healthcare plays for determining different communities’ chances for survival from the same set of disorders.
