Stress-induced disturbances along the gut microbiota-immune-brain axis and implications for mental health: Does sex matter?

Abstract

Women are roughly twice as likely as men to suffer from stress-related disorders, especially major depression and generalized anxiety. Accumulating evidence suggest that microbes inhabiting the gastrointestinal tract (the gut microbiota) interact with the host brain and may play a key role in the pathogenesis of mental illnesses. Here, the possibility that sexually dimorphic alterations along the gut microbiota-immune-brain axis could play a role in promoting this female bias of mood and anxiety disorders will be discussed. This review will also analyze the idea that gut microbes and sex hormones influence each other, and that this reciprocal crosstalk may come to modulate inflammatory players along the gut microbiota-immune-brain axis and influence behavior in a sex-dependent way.

Keywords: Depression; Gut microbiota-immune-brain axis; Hormones; Intestinal permeability; Mental health; Pro-inflammatory cytokines; Sex differences; Stress.