Researchers at University College Cork transplanted gut bacteria from young, 3- to 4-month-old mice into aged, 19- to 20-month-old mice, and compared them with aged mice that received bacteria from other old mice.
Old mice given a young donor's microbiota showed reversed age-associated changes in immune activity, and in the hippocampus's metabolism and gene activity, and eased some memory-related deficits, bringing several measures closer to what is seen in young mice. Old mice given old donor bacteria showed none of these shifts.
The experiment pointed to the gut microbiome as an active participant in brain aging, not just a bystander that changes alongside it, and raised the possibility of microbiome-based treatments for age-related cognitive decline. The work was done entirely in mice and tested only one window of recipient age, so how early such a transplant would need to happen in a human lifespan to help is still unknown.
Read the original study
Boehme et al., Nature Aging, 2021 · doi.org/10.1038/s43587-021-00093-9
A younger gut, a younger-acting brain.
Source
- Boehme, M., Guzzetta, K. E., Bastiaanssen, T. F. S., van de Wouw, M., Moloney, G. M., Gual-Grau, A., Spichak, S., Olavarría-Ramírez, L., Fitzgerald, P., Morillas, E., Ritz, N. L., Jaggar, M., Cowan, C. S. M., Crispie, F., Donoso, F., Halitzki, E., Neto, M. C., Sichetti, M., Golubeva, A. V., . . . Cryan, J. F. (2021). Microbiota from young mice counteracts selective age-associated behavioral deficits. Nature Aging, 1(8), 666–676. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-021-00093-9