'Brightening Mood with the Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis'
sponsored by Bio-Kult

Please note, this is a transcript of the questions received and have been reproduced verbatim in relation to any grammatical errors.

What would qualify as early life stress factors?

In Ceruso et al.’s paper, they define Early Life Stress (ELS) as; ‘having endured episodes of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, or physical and emotional neglect, in addition to other traumatic events (including the loss of the main caregiver, prolonged hospitalization, invasive medical procedures, severe illness or trauma, natural disasters, etc.) during childhood. ELS has been linked to numerous physical and mental diseases, including major depressive disorder (MDD) (Teicher et al. 2016, Ehlert 2013, McCrory et al. 2012, Mandelli et al. 2015, MacMillan et al. 2001, Heim et al. 2008). The link to the full paper is here: https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/506484

In Safadi’s study 2021 on inflammation and mood disorders – how was zonulin measured. My understanding is that the zonulin markers from stool tests is a different zonulin to that found between tight junctions and thus not indidcative at all.

Safadi et al.’s paper was a systematic review for which zonulin was assessed in four studies, all of them used blood samples to measure circulating zonulin. Within the study limitations, zonulin was mentioned; ‘… new evidence questioned the reliability of zonulin as a biomarker of intestinal permeability because of inadequacy of commercially available enzyme assays. However, our results rely on multiple biomarkers of gut dysbiosis, reducing the possibility of biased interpretations’. Here is a link to the full paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-021-01032-1