What is it about?
Childhood gastrointestinal infections are a major health concern that have the potential to impact gut, immune, and brain development. Here we show in mice that such infections reprogram the immune system and disrupt gut-brain communication into adulthood. We also found that beneficial probiotic bacterial products can reduce inflammation and improve neuron-immune cell communication.
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Photo by julien Tromeur on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Treatments for diarrhea caused by bacterial infection that lead to gut-brain deficits are lacking. These probiotic bacterial products may restore gut-brain communication and prevent long-term complications of childhood diarrheal disease, including potentially post-infectious irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
Perspectives
While it is very well established that the gut and brain talk to each other bidirectionally, a better understanding of how this communication occurs is needed to fully understand how to fix it when it's impacted by disease, including gut infection or by mood disorders (anxiety, depression, etc.). This understanding will allow new, more effective treatments to be developed in the future.
Melanie Gareau
University of California Davis
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Neonatal enteric infection disrupts the microbiota–gut–brain axis through pattern recognition receptors and altered neuroimmune signaling, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, September 2026, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2606222123.
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