Quentin Leyrolle

Nutrition and psychoneuroimmunology: experimental and clinical approaches - NutriNeuro

Title

The gut-derived metabolites as a new tool to improve mental health

Abstract

Gut microbiota has been associated with mental health that can be influenced by several neurobiological processes including brain inflammation. Until now mechanisms remained poorly understood. In this regard, gut-derived metabolites (GDM) are interesting compounds that are produced by gut bacteria and, for some of them, can reach the brain and influence brain inflammation and behaviour. Thus, the aim of our work was to select GDM that are decreased in mental health disorders and to test whether a supplementation can have a protective effect in preclinical models against brain inflammation and behavioural disturbances by using microglia cultures and chronic social defeat stress (CSDS) model. We observed that a phenolic GDM is able to alleviate proinflammatory cytokines production under lipopolysaccharides stimulation in primary microglia culture. We also observed that oral supplementation with this GDM was able to rescue CSDS-induced weight gain as well as anxiety and depressive-like behaviour. Our results revealed that phenolic GDM can efficiently modulate microglia inflammatory activity in vitro and prevent chronic stress induced behavioural disturbances.