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Microbiome

Keep calm with ammonia-producing microbiota

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 22, page 2 (2024)Cite this article

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Ammonia is a waste product of urea metabolism. In the human body, it is maintained at a low serum concentration, and when levels are too high, ammonia can cause neurological dysfunctions, due to its neurotoxic properties. In the gut, ammonia is generated by urease-positive bacteria like harmful Helicobacter pylori or beneficial Streptococcus thermophilus and Streptococcus salivarius, which hydrolyse host-derived urea into ammonia and carbon dioxide. It is known that the gut can communicate with the brain via bacterium-derived metabolites. However, whether intestinal ammonia can act as a bacterium-derived metabolite to modulate brain function is unknown. In this study, Wang et al. show that bacterium-derived intestinal ammonia modulates astrocytes in the mouse brain to produce glutamine and reduce stress-induced depressive-like behaviours.

The authors next confirmed the link between reduced gut ammonia and stress susceptibility. They injected mice with flurofamide (FFA), a potent bacterial urease inhibitor. As expected, urease activity in faeces and ammonia levels in blood and faeces were lower than in control mice. FFA-treated mice also presented depressive-like behaviours (decreased sucrose preference and increased immobility time), suggesting that intestinal ammonia deficiency induces stress-related behaviours.

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  1. Nature Reviews Microbiology http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/

    Agustina Taglialegna

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  1. Agustina Taglialegna
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Correspondence to Agustina Taglialegna.

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Taglialegna, A. Keep calm with ammonia-producing microbiota. Nat Rev Microbiol 22, 2 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-023-00996-x

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