Struggling to cope with stress? This new probiotic injection can help

In this new study, the researchers showed that immunisation with beneficial bacteria can have long-lasting anti-inflammatory effects on the brain, making it more resilient to the physical and behavioural effects of stress.

A new probiotic-based shot that could protect against post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression -- that are known to impact as many as one in four people in their lifetime -- could soon be on the anvil, say researchers.

Various studies have suggested that stress-induced brain inflammation are boosting risk of such disorders, in part by impacting mood-influencing neurotransmitters like norepinephrine or dopamine. Thus in the new study, the researchers showed that immunisation with beneficial bacteria can have long-lasting anti-inflammatory effects on the brain, making it more resilient to the physical and behavioural effects of stress.

“If you look at the field of probiotics generally, they have been shown to have strong effects in the domains of cognitive function, anxiety and fear,” said Christopher Lowry, Associate Professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

“The study helps make sense of that by suggesting that these beneficial microbes, or signals derived from these microbes, somehow make their way to the hippocampus, inducing an anti-inflammatory state,” Lowry added. For the study, published in the journal Brain, Behaviour and Immunity, the team injected male rats with the Mycobacterium vaccae (M vaccae) bacterium three times, one week apart.

“We found that in rodents this particular bacterium, Mycobacterium vaccae, actually shifts the environment in the brain toward an anti-inflammatory state,” said Matthew Frank, senior research associate at the varsity. “If you could do that in people, it could have broad implications for a number of neuroinflammatory diseases,” he noted.

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