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The gut microbiome regulates the increases in depressive-type behaviors and in inflammatory processes in the ventral hippocampus of stress vulnerable rats

Molecular Psychiatry volume 25, pages 1068–1079 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Chronic exposure to stress is associated with increased incidence of depression, generalized anxiety, and PTSD. However, stress induces vulnerability to such disorders only in a sub-population of individuals, as others remain resilient. Inflammation has emerged as a putative mechanism for promoting stress vulnerability. Using a rodent model of social defeat, we have previously shown that rats with short-defeat latencies (SL/vulnerable rats) show increased anxiety- and depression-like behaviors, and these behaviors are mediated by inflammation in the ventral hippocampus. The other half of socially defeated rats show long-latencies to defeat (LL/resilient) and are similar to controls. Because gut microbiota are important activators of inflammatory substances, we assessed the role of the gut microbiome in mediating vulnerability to repeated social defeat stress. We analyzed the fecal microbiome of control, SL/vulnerable, and LL/resilient rats using shotgun metagenome sequencing and observed increased expression of immune-modulating microbiota, such as Clostridia, in SL/vulnerable rats. We then tested the importance of gut microbiota to the SL/vulnerable phenotype. In otherwise naive rats treated with microbiota from SL/vulnerable rats, there was higher microglial density and IL-1β expression in the vHPC, and higher depression-like behaviors relative to rats that received microbiota from LL/resilient rats, non-stressed control rats, or vehicle-treated rats. However, anxiety-like behavior during social interaction was not altered by transplant of the microbiome of SL/vulnerable rats into non-stressed rats. Taken together, the results suggest the gut microbiome contributes to the depression-like behavior and inflammatory processes in the vHPC of stress vulnerable individuals.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Army Research Office under grant number W911NF1010093 to SB. We would like to thank Victoria Siu, Zoe Temple, and Ria Chhabra for assistance with data analysis.

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  1. Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Jiah Pearson-Leary, Darrell Eacret, Sandra Luz, Abigail S. Vigderman, Gabriel Dayanim & Seema Bhatnagar

  2. Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Chunyu Zhao & Kyle Bittinger

  3. University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Seema Bhatnagar

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Pearson-Leary, J., Zhao, C., Bittinger, K. et al. The gut microbiome regulates the increases in depressive-type behaviors and in inflammatory processes in the ventral hippocampus of stress vulnerable rats. Mol Psychiatry 25, 1068–1079 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-019-0380-x

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