A Bacterial Solution to Depression
By NICOLE KENNY, Virox Technologies Inc.

A chance observation by a research team at Bristol University, published in Neuroscience, led to speculation that a particular sort of bacterium might alleviate clinical depression. 

Oncologist Dr. Mary O’Brien, at Royal Marsden Hospital in London, was trying out an experimental treatment for lung cancer that involved inoculating patients with (itals)Mycobacterium vaccae(enditals). This is a harmless relative of the bugs that cause tuberculosis and leprosy that had been killed before injection. When Dr. O’Brien gave the inoculation, she observed not only fewer symptoms of the cancer, but also an improvement in her patients’ emotional health, vitality and general cognitive function. 

To find out what was going on, researcher Dr. Craig Lowry turned to mice. His hypothesis was that the immune response to M. vaccae induces the brain to produce serotonin, a neurotransmitter, and one symptom of depression is low levels of it. 

Dr. Lowry and his team injected their mice with M. vaccae and examined them, looking for a rise in the level of cytokines. As expected, cytokine levels rose. They then looked directly in their animals’ brains for the effect of those cytokines. 

Cytokines are molecules produced by the immune system that trigger responses in the brain and act on sensory nerves that run to the brain from organs such as the heart and the lungs. That action stimulates a brain structure called the dorsal raphe nucleus. It was this nucleus that Dr. Lowry focused on. He found a group of cells within it that connect directly to the limbic system, the brain’s emotion-generating area. These cells release serotonin into the limbic system in response to sensory nerve stimulation. 

The consequence of that release is stress-free mice. Dr. Lowry was able to measure their stress by dropping them into a tiny swimming pool. Previous research has shown that unstressed mice enjoy swimming, while stressed ones do not. His mice swam around enthusiastically. This result offers the possibility of treating clinical depression with what is, in effect, a vaccination. Besides cancer, and now depression, M. vaccae is also being looked at as a way of treating Crohn’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis.

 

order viagra online order viagra online order viagra online order viagra online order viagra online order viagra online order viagra online get free mp3 downloads day n nite free mp3 free mp3 sites