Probiotics and the microbiota-gut-brain axis: Focus on psychiatry
Open accessAbstract
PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Probiotics are living bacteria, which when ingested in adequate amounts, confer health benefits. Gut microbes are suggested to play a role in many psychiatric disorders and could be a potential therapeutic target. Between the gut and the brain, there is a bi-directional communication pathway called the microbiota-gut-brain axis. The purpose of this review is to examine data from recent interventional studies focusing on probiotics and the gut-brain axis for the treatment of depression, anxiety and schizophrenia. RECENT FINDINGS: Probiotics are likely to improve depression but not schizophrenia. Regarding anxiety, there is only one trial which showed an effect of a multispecies probiotic. However, determinants like the duration of treatment, dosage and interactions have not been thoroughly investigated and deserve more scientific attention. Microbiome-based therapies such as probiotics could be cautiously recommended for depression to enhance beneficial bacteria in the gut and to improve mood through the gut-brain axis.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Probiotics can affect the CNS by regulating the intestinal flora and preventing mental diseases through the gut-brain axis.
“several research findings have shown that probiotics can affect the CNS by regulating the intestinal flora and preventing mental diseases through the gut–brain axis [71,72,73].”
From Probiotics Regulate Gut Microbiota: An Effective Method to Improve Immunity (2021) · cites this paper as [72]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 93 · Cited by 337
- Authors
- Mörkl, S., Butler, M. I., Holl, A., Cryan, J. F., & Dinan, T. G.
- Affiliations
- Medical University of Graz (AT)
- University College Cork (IE)
- Corresponding author
- Mörkl, Sabrina
- Venue
- Current Nutrition Reports
- Published
- 2020-05-13
- Volume
- 9
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 171-182
- ISSN
- 2161-3311 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7398953
- OpenAlex
- W3025080937
- Cited by
- 337
- References
- 93
- Citations by year
- 2026: 41 · 2025: 57 · 2024: 83 · 2023: 63 · 2022: 54 · 2021: 31 · 2020: 6 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 3.28
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2020-06-05)
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Current Nutrition Reports (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Cork Open Research Archive (University College Cork, Ireland) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Science Foundation Irleand (SFI/12/RC/2273)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Food Science › Probiotics and Fermented Foods
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Gut microbiota and health
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Gastroenterology › Gastrointestinal motility and disorders
- Keywords
- probiotics, microbiota-gut-brain axis, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, gut microbiota, mental illness, microbiota-based therapy, mood
- MeSH terms
- Gastrointestinal Microbiome, Animals, Mental Disorders, Brain, Humans, Probiotics
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
