Over the past few years, more and more research has been published revealing just how fundamental our gut microbiome is to our health. It can affect everything from our response to fear and negative stimuli, to our weight and mental health, to whether or not we develop autoimmune diseases such as lupus and type 1 diabetes.<\/p>\n
Now, a new study published in\u00a0The Journal of Immunology\u00a0has found a link between the gut microbiome and the neurodevelopmental condition autism using animal studies. However, it is not our own microbiome that affects whether or not we develop autism, the researchers say\u00a0\u2013 it\u2019s our mom\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe microbiome can shape the developing brain in multiple ways,\u201d\u00a0John Lukens, lead researcher and PhD student from the University of Virginia School of Medicine, said in a\u00a0statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe microbiome is really important to the calibration of how the offspring\u2019s immune system is going to respond to an infection or injury or stress.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for autism, this link may come down to a particular molecule called\u00a0interleukin-17a (or\u00a0IL-17a), which is produced by the immune system. The molecule\u00a0has already been\u00a0associated with conditions like\u00a0rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis,\u00a0and psoriasis, and has been shown to serve an important role in preventing infections, notably those of the fungal kind. Importantly, it can also influence the way the brain develops in the womb.<\/p>\n
To test their hypothesis that autism may be triggered by the\u00a0IL-17a molecule, the team blocked\u00a0IL-17a in lab mice. The researchers recruited female mice from two separate laboratories \u2013 those\u00a0from the first contained microflora in the gut that made them prone to an IL-17a-induced inflammatory response, whereas those from the second (the control) did not.<\/p>\n
When the\u00a0IL-17a molecule was artificially blocked (preventing IL-17a-induced inflammatory responses), the pups from both sets of mice were born with neuro-typical behaviors. Yet, when everything was left to progress without additional human intervention, the pups born from mothers in the first group went on to develop\u00a0an autism-like neurodevelopmental condition, which affected social and repetitive behaviors.<\/p>\n
To confirm that this was due to the group\u2019s unique microflora, the researchers performed a fecal transplant on mice from the second group using the feces of the mice from the first group. The idea here is to change the microflora of the second group so that it more closely resembles that of the first. And, as expected, the pups from the second group went on to develop an autism-like neurodevelopmental condition.<\/p>\n
These are preliminary studies and may not translate to human pregnancies, but it does offer an interesting avenue to explore as far as autism research is concerned and provides strong evidence\u00a0that the health of the mother\u2019s gut plays at least some role in the onset of neurodevelopmental conditions.<\/p>\n
<\/span>The next step, Lukens said, is to see if they can detect similar correlations in humans and work out what it is in the mother\u2019s microbiome that relates to autism development. There are also several other molecules to examine. As Lukens added,\u00a0IL-17a may be just one piece in a much larger puzzle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the past few years, more and more research has been published revealing just how fundamental our gut microbiome is to our health. It can affect everything from our response to fear and negative stimuli, to our weight and mental health, to whether or not we develop autoimmune diseases such as lupus and type 1…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n