Pharmacy Daily | Study on gut brain axis to affect drugs

THE mechanisms by which antidepressants and other emotion-focused medications work could be reconsidered due to a new understanding of how the gut communicates with the brain.

The research led by Flinders University has uncovered a new development which could have a "profound impact" on the make-up and use of common medications such as antidepressants.

Prof Nick Spencer (pictured) from the university's College of Medicine and Public Health said, "as part of the gut-brain axis, vagal sensory nerves relay a variety of signals from the gut to the brain that play an important role in mental health and wellbeing".

"The mechanisms by which vagal sensory nerve endings in the gut wall are activated has been a major mystery but remains of great interest to medical science and potential treatments for mental health and wellbeing."

Serotonin is a major hormone and neurotransmitter in the body and has been shown to play a significant role in a range of bodily functions, including mental health and depression.

"The results of our new research uncovered that any substances (including serotonin) released mostly from enteroendocrine cells (EEC)must communicate via a process of diffusion to the sensory nerve endings of the vagus nerve, that lie in the colon or large intestine.

"This is a major discovery for our understanding of gut-brain communication which has profound implications for drug developments, treatments of anxiety and depression and other digestive problems such as irritable bowel syndrome, all of which involve serotonin in some way, and the use of selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, a common type of antidepressant," Spencer said.

The study, 'Identification of vagal afferents nerve endings in the mouse colon and their spatial relationship with enterochromaffin cells', was published in Cell and Tissue Research HERE. JG