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. 2021 Apr 15;11(1):8302.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-87865-w.

Anxiolytic effects of a galacto-oligosaccharides prebiotic in healthy females (18-25 years) with corresponding changes in gut bacterial composition

Nicola Johnstone  1 , Chiara Milesi  2 , Olivia Burn  2 , Bartholomeus van den Bogert  3   4 , Arjen Nauta  5 , Kathryn Hart  6 , Paul Sowden  2   7 , Philip W J Burnet  8 , Kathrin Cohen Kadosh  9
Affiliations

Anxiolytic effects of a galacto-oligosaccharides prebiotic in healthy females (18-25 years) with corresponding changes in gut bacterial composition

Nicola Johnstone et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Current research implicates pre- and probiotic supplementation as a potential tool for improving symptomology in physical and mental ailments, which makes it an attractive concept for clinicians and consumers alike. Here we focus on the transitional period of late adolescence and early adulthood during which effective interventions, such as nutritional supplementation to influence the gut microbiota, have the potential to offset health-related costs in later life. We examined multiple indices of mood and well-being in 64 healthy females in a 4-week double blind, placebo controlled galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS) prebiotic supplement intervention and obtained stool samples at baseline and follow-up for gut microbiota sequencing and analyses. We report effects of the GOS intervention on self-reported high trait anxiety, attentional bias, and bacterial abundance, suggesting that dietary supplementation with a GOS prebiotic may improve indices of pre-clinical anxiety. Gut microbiota research has captured the imagination of the scientific and lay community alike, yet we are now at a stage where this early enthusiasm will need to be met with rigorous research in humans. Our work makes an important contribution to this effort by combining a psychobiotic intervention in a human sample with comprehensive behavioural and gut microbiota measures.

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Conflict of interest statement

AN is an employee of FrieslandCampina, Amersfoort, The Netherlands. BvdB reports co-ownership of MyMicroZoo, Leiden, The Netherlands with no financial benefit from contributions to this manuscript. NJ, CM, OB, KH, PS, PWJB and KCK declared no financial or potential conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Interaction of attentional vigilance to stimulus valence (y-axis, bias score (z-scores)) by intervention group in the high anxious group (A), and the low anxious group (B) at follow-up. Error bars illustrate SE (A), high anxious GOS group shows a trend towards reduced bias to negative stimuli, and increased bias to positive stimuli in comparison to the placebo group. *p = 0.070. (B) Low anxious Placebo group shows a trend towards reduced bias to negative stimuli, and increased bias to positive stimuli in comparison to the GOS group. *p = 0.069.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Ordination diagram from RDA for samples from the placebo and GOS group collected at baseline and follow-up, where the RDA indicates the association between Time [explanatory variables (x axis)] and bacterial community data on the Genus level. Scores of the first RDA-axis are plotted on the x-axis and scores of the first PCA-axis are plotted on the y-axis. Individual samples are represented by points that are coloured by time and samples belonging to the same collection time are enveloped. Triangles in the RDA diagrams represent the class centroids. Grey points and labels represent the 10 best-fitting genus level bacterial groups. The psychological measurements (environmental variables) are fitted onto the ordination and indicated by the named arrows. The arrow shows the direction of the (increasing) gradient, and the length of the arrow is proportional to the correlation between the variable and the ordination. Only those psychological measurements with a p value of < 0.10 are added to the ordination. The calculated p-value from Unrestricted Permutation Test is added to the upper left corner of the RDA diagram.
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