Controlled by bugs
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https://phys.org/news/2021-01-specific-bacteria-gut-prompt-mother.html
Gut bacteria cause mice moms to ignore their pups:
"To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that the intestinal microbiota is important for promoting healthy maternal behavior and bonding between mom and offspring in an animal model," says Professor Janelle Ayres, Laboratory Head of Salk's Molecular and Systems Physiology Laboratory and senior author of the paper. "It adds to the ever-growing evidence that there's a gut-brain connection, and that microbes are important for regulating the behavior of the host that they're inhabiting."
The ways in which the microbiota can impact mental health and neurological disorders is a growing area of research. The makeup of the gut microbiota in people has been linked to depression, anxiety, autism and other conditions. But it has been difficult to study how individual strains of bacteria exert their influence on human behavior, a connection often called the microbiota-gut-brain axis.
In her lab, Ayres uses mice to study how body systems and the brain interact with each other to promote health. This includes focusing on how body processes are regulated by microbes and the ways in which microbes affect growth and behavior. In the current experiments, she and her team were investigating groups of mice that each had a single strain of E. coli in their gut. Mice with one particular strain of E. coli, called O16:H48 MG1655, mothered offspring that had stunted growth. Further examination revealed that the mice were smaller because they were malnourished.
"We found that the pups' behavior was normal, and the milk made by the mothers was of normal, healthy composition and was being produced in normal amounts," Ayres says. "We eventually figured out that being colonized with this particular bacteria led to poor maternal behavior. The mice were neglecting their pups."
Additional experiments revealed that the mice could be rescued from stunted growth, either by giving them a growth factor called IGF-1 or handing them off to foster mouse mothers that could take care of them properly. This confirmed that the cause of stunted growth was coming from the mothers' behavior rather than something in the pups themselves.
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@brenda said in Controlled by bugs:
Wondering if/when such a link is also found in humans.
It’s not my fault! It’s the microscopic organisms!
