Depressed? That could be related to what you eat Healthy

A major article appeared in December last year the journal Nature Communications, which presented the large-scale study of the relationship between gut bacteria and depressive feelings. A group of scientists at Erasmus University has been working on this since 2012.

To see which bacteria occur in the intestines, the faeces of thousands of Rotterdammers and Amsterdammers were examined. Depressed feelings were also measured via questionnaires. This showed that a connection was found between fourteen groups of intestinal bacteria and feelings of depression, both in the Rotterdam and Amsterdam groups.

“The collaboration between two research groups in Rotterdam and Amsterdam makes the research special,” says Robert Kraaij, molecular biologist and assistant professor at Erasmus MC. This allowed for greater replication, meaning that a study is performed again using the same method and obtains the same results. “These groups check each other’s data.”

The researchers started collecting poop from 2012. The analysis between the poop microbiome and depression then started in 2018. “What we would have preferred is that we had gone into the intestines of all those people, but that is too expensive and too drastic for the participants.”

,, Collecting poop is also not very pleasant, but it is the easiest. We think the poop microbiome is a fair reflection of the gut microbiome.”

The field of research in which microbiomes are related to all kinds of diseases has been around for a number of years now. The link between gut bacteria and depression has also been shown before, for example in animals. In particular, the December study shows that the link between gut bacteria and depression is getting stronger. “We find bacteria that had already been found in previous research,” says Kraaij.

“I am not a psychologist, but I am someone who can create and analyze a dataset. What I’ve seen so far is that the link between the gut microbiome and depression is one of the strongest associations.”

Probably not one, but a combination of bacteria causes depressive feelings. If you want to ‘buy away’ that bacteria, changing your diet may help. Kraaij: ,,It is not that we can already say: you should eat this or that. You have to eat healthy and live healthy.” Antibiotics, prebiotics and probiotics may also be a solution.

In addition, the researcher emphasizes that this study is not the solution for depression. “The whole picture plays a role. How are you, how do you think, what setbacks have you had in life? But also things like: how healthy do you live and how is your microbiome structured?”

The scientists want to make the follow-up research even bigger. This means that they will merge even more research groups (cohorts) and possibly collaborate with the United States. “We want to investigate the causal relationship between intestinal bacteria and depression even better.

For this, we use DNA profiles, for example, and we look at which ones are involved in depression and the composition of the gut microbiome. That way you can determine whether one causes the other.”