Gut Microbiota - A Potential Contributor in the Pathogenesis of Bipolar Disorder

Peifen Zhang; Lingzhuo Kong; Huimin Huang; Yanmeng Pan; Danhua Zhang; Jiajun Jiang; Yuting Shen; Caixi Xi; Jianbo Lai; Chee H Ng; Shaohua Hu

doi:10.3389/fnins.2022.830748

Gut Microbiota - A Potential Contributor in the Pathogenesis of Bipolar Disorder

Front Neurosci. 2022 Mar 23:16:830748. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2022.830748. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Peifen Zhang^{1

2}, Lingzhuo Kong¹, Huimin Huang³, Yanmeng Pan¹, Danhua Zhang¹, Jiajun Jiang¹, Yuting Shen³, Caixi Xi¹, Jianbo Lai^{1

2

4

5}, Chee H Ng⁶, Shaohua Hu^{1

2

4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychiatry, The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China.
² MOE Frontier Science Center for Brain Science and Brain-Machine Integration, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
³ Department of Psychiatry, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China.
⁴ The Key Laboratory of Mental Disorder Management in Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou, China.
⁵ Brain Research Institute, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
⁶ Department of Psychiatry, The Melbourne Clinic and St Vincent's Hospital, University of Melbourne, Richmond, VIC, Australia.

Abstract

Bipolar disorder (BD) is one of the major psychiatric disorders that is characterized by recurrent episodes of depression and mania (or hypomania), leading to seriously adverse outcomes with unclear pathogenesis. There is an underlying relationship between bacterial communities residing in the gut and brain function, which together form the gut-brain axis (GBA). Recent studies have shown that changes in the gut microbiota have been observed in a large number of BD patients, so the axis may play a role in the pathogenesis of BD. This review summarizes briefly the relationship between the GBA and brain function, the composition and changes of gut microbiota in patients with BD, and further explores the potential role of GBA-related pathway in the pathogenesis of BD as well as the limitations in this field at present in order to provide new ideas for the future etiology research and drug development.

Keywords: bipolar disorder; gut microbiota; gut-brain axis; pathogenesis; treatment.

Publication types

Review