Probiotic yogurt, known for helping maintain a healthy intestinal tract, could be used in the treatment of depression, according to a recent study by researchers at University College Cork in Ireland.
The authors of this study found that bacteria in the intestinal tract have a direct effect on brain health in mice, and this effect might exist in humans, informs dailymail.co.uk.
If the human brain is affected in the same way, Irish scientists believe that this discovery could lead to a new way of treating depression and other illnesses that cause anxiety.
Intestinal diseases have been associated with diseases already been causing mental stress and the link between the two categories of diseases has led researchers to study in detail this link.
In this study, scientists fed mice with a kind of “soup” containing Lactobacillus rhamnosus JB-1, a bacteria species that lives in the human digestive system.
Mice fed with this type of soup showed fewer signs of stress, anxiety and depression compared with those fed a regular soup.
Mice were placed in stressful situations – in a maze – and the ones that were fed the special kind of soup containing Lactobacillus rhamnosus bacteria JB-1 have synthesized a smaller amount of corticosterone, a stress hormone.
John Cryan, who led the study, told LiveScience: “Affecting the intestinal bacteria, you can get a fairly wide and robust range of effects on chemical reactions of brain and the behavior.
Without extrapolating, this opens the way to get new therapies that could treat mental illness. Patients may eat probiotic yogurt instead of taking antidepressants”.
The Irish researcher believes, however, that people suffering from depression can not simply go to buy yogurt from a local supermarket, because the effectiveness of these products depends on the probiotic strain included in these dairy products.
In addition, Jon Cryan believes that probiotics cause patients fewer negative side effects than current drugs for anxiety, such as Valium. The study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.