Depressed from chewing pig trotters?

Food has become the spiritual comfort of contemporary young people.

To investigate the association between diet and depression, the researchers collected the daily diet of 116 participants in the form of questionnaires, including 44 non-depressed patients, 47 mildly depressed patients, and 25 severely depressed patients

As a non-essential amino acid, proline is distributed in a variety of proteins and is an important component of collagen and cartilage.

The researchers analyzed the feces of the participants.

To further demonstrate that proline can indeed affect depression severity, the researchers also conducted experiments in mice and fruit flies

The researchers then transplanted fecal microbiota from 20 patients with different levels of depression into 20 antibiotic-treated mice, and the mice acquired gut microbiota with different proline metabolizing abilities

A typical manifestation of patients with major depressive disorder is a decline in frontal lobe function, mainly involving the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) that regulates emotion, cognition, and decision-making functions

To probe the role of Slc6a20 in depression, in Drosophila experiments, the researchers knocked down Slc6a20 gene expression in Drosophila nerve cells

The above experiments suggest that the proline transporter in mPFC is involved in regulating the occurrence of depressive behavior, and the fecal microbiota affects the severity of depression by affecting the expression of proline transporter in the brain

The researchers also transplanted two kinds of intestinal flora into sterile fruit flies, one is Lactobacillus plantarum, which is favorable for proline metabolism, and the other is Enterobacter cloacae, which is unfavorable for proline metabolism

For the first time, research has revealed a relationship between proline, gut microbiota and depression

(Source: Bio Valley)

"China Food News" (July 27, 2022 Edition 03)

(Editor-in-charge: Han Songyan)