Doctor Column: Good gut health aids depression

Depression is still a very ill understood condition. While antidepressants and various types of talking therapy are of great help, and make life bearable for most people who go to their doctor seeking help, there are still a substantial number who just do not get their proper sense of wellbeing back.

Interesting research from Switzerland just published in the journal Translational Psychiatry has looked at giving additional probiotics to either antidepressants or talking therapy. The results were highly encouraging and suggest that the microbiome, the bacterial population in the bowel can have a large part to play. This is again through what is termed the gut-brain axis.

Previous research studies have shown that patients with depression are more likely than the average to have intestinal and digestive problems.

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In one such study it was found that if bowel microflora of people with depression is implanted in mice raised in sterile conditions, effectively mice with no bowel microflora of their own, then they developed depressive behaviour. This was not shown in mice that received microflora from people who were not depressed.

This led scientists to suspect that the composition of the bowel microflora plays an important role in depressive symptoms.

In this new research scientists looked at the effects of giving probiotics to patients suffering with depression. All participants were inpatients at the University Psychiatric Clinic in Clinic in Basel, Switzerland. Half were given probiotics and half were given placebos in addition to their usual antidepressant medication and talking therapy over a month.

The researchers carried out a series of tests on the participants immediately before treatment and at the end of the month. They found that all patients experienced improvement in their depression, but there was a significantly greater improvement in the subjects in the probiotic group than in the placebo group.

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