Short‐chain fatty acids: microbial metabolites that alleviate stress‐induced brain–gut axis alterations

By M. van de Wouw, Marcus Boehme, J. Lyte, Niamh C Wiley, C. Strain, Orla O'Sullivan, G. Clarke, C. Stanton, Ted G. Dinan, J. Cryan. Journal of Physiology, 2018

658 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Chronic (psychosocial) stress changes gut microbiota composition, as well as inducing behavioural and physiological deficits. The microbial metabolites short‐chain fatty acids (SCFAs) have been implicated in gastrointestinal functional, (neuro)immune regulation and host metabolism, but their role in stress‐induced behavioural and physiological alterations is poorly understood. Administration of SCFAs to mice undergoing psychosocial stress alleviates enduring alterations in anhedonia and heightened stress‐responsiveness, as well as stress‐induced increases in intestinal permeability. In contrast, chronic stress‐induced alterations in body weight gain, faecal SCFAs and the gene expression of the SCFA receptors FFAR2 and FFAR3 remained unaffected by SCFA supplementation. These results present novel insights into mechanisms underpinning the influence of the gut microbiota on brain homeostasis, behaviour and host metabolism, informing the development of microbiota‐targeted therapies for stress‐related disorders.

Subfields: Food Science, Gastroenterology, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/954ef275c642459e8cf0d917a9d80b922fd4bb5d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Food Science

1. G. Clarke
2. J. Cryan

In Gastroenterology

1. G. Clarke
2. J. Cryan
3. Ygor P. Silva
4. A. Bernardi
5. R. Frozza
6. Ted G. Dinan

In Molecular Biology

1. J. Cryan
2. G. Clarke
3. Ygor P. Silva
4. A. Bernardi
5. R. Frozza
6. Ted G. Dinan
7. S. Mazmanian
8. C. Stanton

Citations in the corpus

• The Role of Short-Chain Fatty Acids From Gut Microbiota in Gut-Brain Communication (2020, background): “Studies on chronic psychosocial stress have also shown a possible application for prebiotics (154) and SCFAs (8) in reverting sociability impairment while also reducing stressinduced corticosterone release.”
• Short chain fatty acids: Microbial metabolites for gut-brain axis signalling. (2022, background): “…pathway comprising the immune system, tryptophan metabolism, vagus nerve activity, the enteric nervous system (Soret et al., 2010), as well as bioactives (microbial by-products or metabolites) produced by the gut microbiome (Vuong et al., 2017; van der Hee and Wells, 2021; Fung et al., 2017).”