Useful Bacteria Probiotics can significantly reduce anxiety

How do probiotics affect fears??

Taking probiotics can reduce anxiety in rodents. Researchers are now trying to find out whether such a dose can also help to reduce people's feelings of anxiety.

Researchers at the University of Kansas found in their recent research that taking probiotics in mice can reduce anxiety. The study should now find out if this effect can also be seen in humans. The physicians published the results of their research work in the medical journal "Plos One".

Fears can affect people so much that their quality of life is significantly reduced. Sometimes this goes so far that those affected can no longer normally participate in everyday life. (Image: Photographee.eu/fotolia.com)

What are psychobiotics??

There is no clear indication that taking probiotics can help reduce anxiety in humans, although new research shows that anxiety is reduced in rodents, the experts explain. A wide range of diseases, from obesity to asthma, have been linked to the bacteria that live in our intestines. A number of studies also suggest a link to mood and behavior. As a result, interest in so-called psychobiotics is growing: Useful bacteria (probiotics) that affect the health of the brain through changes in the intestinal flora.

People with fears should seek professional help

When analyzing the results of previous studies, there was already evidence that probiotics appear to reduce anxiety in rodents. But there is little evidence that probiotics produce similar benefits in humans, the researchers add. When people suffer from anxiety, they should not rely on probiotics, the researchers explain. Patients should definitely seek professional help and various therapies are available, adds study author Daniel Reis from the University of Kansas.

A total of 36 studies were evaluated

Reis and his colleagues studied 22 studies involving a total of 743 rats and mice. In addition, 14 studies were analyzed, in which a total of 1,527 people had participated. So the doctors wanted to find out if probiotics generally reduce anxiety.

Lactobacillus rhamnosus reduced anxiety in diseased mice

Such a compound could be seen in sick rodents suffering from stress in early life, infections or other specifically induced impairments. In healthy animals, however, such a compound could not be observed. The positive results in animals were consistently associated with one type of bacteria (Lactobacillus rhamnosus), although individual studies suggested that other species and strains could also have an anxiety-reducing effect. However, no positive effect in humans could be observed in the evaluation of the studies, whether they were healthy or suffering from impairments such as cancer, irritable bowel syndrome or mood disorder, the scientists explain.

Probiotics only help with pronounced anxiety disorders?

Researchers note that none of the post-partum studies involved people with a diagnosed anxiety disorder. Probiotics could possibly only help if certain anxiety states have already been reached, the doctors suspect. The experience of fear was also based on the self-assessment of the participants and these assessments could have been unreliable. Maybe the follow-up exam was not long enough to see all the effects, say the doctors. Before any conclusions are drawn, it must first be tested how probiotics affect people with clinically significant anxiety, adds Reis.

Further research is needed

The research team further explains that administered doses of rodent probiotics were up to 100 times greater in body weight than human doses. This suggests that experts should investigate whether the lack of effect observed in humans is due, at least in part, to inadequate doses. (As)