Microbiome Mediates Development of PTSD and Resilience.

Identication of youth at risk for post-traumatic pathology is critical for public health, medicine, and social policy but research has not yet succeeded in pinpointing biomarkers that can distinguish the post- traumatic from the resilient prole in contexts of trauma. As trauma alters the microbiome with lasting effects on the host, the current longitudinal, multi-measure, cross-species study sought to outline the microbial signature of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Researchers followed a unique trauma-exposed cohort for 15 years, from early childhood to adolescence, repeatedly assessing post-traumatic symptomatology. Gut microbiome composition and diversity characterized post-traumatic pathology, distinguished youth with PTSD from resilient individuals, and mediated the continuity of post-traumatic disorder. Mother-child microbial synchrony was reduced in cases of PTSD, suggesting that diminished microbial concordance among family members may index susceptibility to post-traumatic illness. Germ- free mice transplanted with PTSD microbiomes compared with those receiving resilient microbiomes exhibited anxious behavior. Their findings provide causative evidence that the microbial trauma role is at least partially responsible for the trauma-related phenotype and highlight microbial underpinnings of resilience. These results suggest that the microbial ecology may serve as additional biological memory of early life stress and underscore the potential for microbiome-related diagnosis and treatment following trauma exposure. ​

Link to article: ​https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-1940296/v1/04b6dfa3-b692-4948-a318-39693e7e2204.pdf?c=1660812080