Gut bacteria treatment for depression leaves China laughing online
- Researchers find faecal transplants lessen depressive symptoms in mice
Chinese researchers have established a link between depression and intestinal microbes but their work has been ridiculed on social media as a “useless study featuring eating s***”.
Yao Honghong, a researcher at the medical school of Southeast University in Nanjing, and her team were observing mice in which the NLRP3 gene had been knocked out when they noticed the animals exhibiting depressive-like behaviours compared to the control group.
At the same time, the mice showed a marked difference in the composition of their intestinal microbiota – the microorganisms which are found in the gut. Yao said the research team transplanted faeces from healthy mice into the depressive mice, which displayed a significant lessening in their symptoms.
The study, co-authored by Yao, was published in the American online scientific journal Microbiome last month. Some media reports in China carried the headline “excrement can cure depression”, leading to jokes from many in the online community.
“The correct expression is the transplantation of gut microbiota, not ‘eating s***’ as some netizens are expressing,” Yao said.