ArticleMolecular psychiatry2018
Cafeteria diet and probiotic therapy: cross talk among memory, neuroplasticity, serotonin receptors and gut microbiota in the rat.
Article in Molecular psychiatry, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 50 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
50 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 112 citations in OpenAlex.
- Biochemical, Molecular and Behavioral Changes Induced by High-fat and High-sugar Diets: A Systematic Review of Non-clinical Studies.Molecular neurobiology · 2026Pooled it
- The anxiolytic effect of probiotics: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the clinical and preclinical literature.PloS one · 2018Pooled it
- Psychobiotic Effects of Postbiotics in Depression, Psychosis and Mania.Health promotion perspectives · 2026Review
- Probiotics and Curcumin Did Not Alter Low-Dose Streptozotocin-Induced Hyperglycemia and Oxidative Stress in a Rat Model.Food science & nutrition · 2026Article
- Cafeteria diet exposure, and not weight gain propensity, impacts gut microbiota of rats - a within laboratory meta-analysis.Gut microbes reports · 2026Article
- Gut microbiota and the tryptophan-kynurenine pathway in anxiety: new insights and treatment strategies.Journal of neural transmission (Vienna, Austria : 1996) · 2025Review
- Item recognition is associated with gut microbiota composition in healthy humans.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Probiotic Bactolac alleviates depression-like behaviors by modulating BDNF, NLRP3 and MC4R levels, reducing neuroinflammation and promoting neural repair in rat model.Pflugers Archiv : European journal of physiology · 2025Article
- Probiotics alleviate painful diabetic neuropathy by modulating the microbiota-gut-nerve axis in rats.Journal of neuroinflammation · 2025Article
- Modulation of Intestinal Inflammation and Protection of Dopaminergic Neurons in Parkinson's Disease Mice through a Probiotic Formulation Targeting NLRP3 Inflammasome.Journal of neuroimmune pharmacology : the official journal of the Society on NeuroImmune Pharmacology · 2025Article
- Humid heat environment causes anxiety-like disorder via impairing gut microbiota and bile acid metabolism in mice.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Exploring the serotonin-probiotics-gut health axis: A review of current evidence and potential mechanisms.Food science & nutrition · 2024Review
- Article
- Acanthopanax senticosus extract alleviates radiation-induced learning and memory impairment based on neurotransmitter-gut microbiota communication.CNS neuroscience & therapeutics · 2023Article
- Probiotics therapy show significant improvement in obesity and neurobehavioral disorders symptoms.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2023Review
- Fecal microbiota transplantation as a promising treatment option for osteoporosis.Journal of bone and mineral metabolism · 2022Review
- Feeding the Brain: Effect of Nutrients on Cognition, Synaptic Function, and AMPA Receptors.Nutrients · 2022Review
- Investigation of memory-enhancing effects of Streptococcus thermophilus EG007 in mice and elucidating molecular and metagenomic characteristics using nanopore sequencing.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Modulating role of serotonergic signaling in sleep and memory.Pharmacological reports : PR · 2022Review
- Overnutrition Induced Cognitive Impairment: Insulin Resistance, Gut-Brain Axis, and Neuroinflammation.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The western diet is known to have detrimental effects on cognition and the gut microbiota, but few studies have investigated how these may be related. Here, we examined whether a probiotic could prevent diet-induced memory deficits. Rats were pre-exposed to vehicle, low or high doses of VSL#3 for 2 weeks before half were switched from chow to a cafeteria diet (Caf) for 25 days; VSL#3 treatment continued until death. High-dose VSL#3 prevented the diet-induced memory deficits on the hippocampal-dependent place task, but the probiotic caused deficits on the perirhinal-dependent object task, irrespective of diet or dose. No differences were observed in anxiety-like behaviour on the elevated plus maze. Gut microbial diversity was dramatically decreased by Caf diet and here, VSL#3 was able to increase the abundance of some taxa contained in the probiotic such as Streptococcus and Lactobacillus and also other taxa including Butyrivibrio, which were decreased by the Caf diet. This affected the predicted profile of microbial metabolic pathways related to antioxidant and bile biosynthesis, and fat and carbohydrate metabolism. In the hippocampus, the Caf diet increased the expression of many genes related to neuroplasticity and serotonin receptor (5HT) 1A, which was normalised in Caf-High rats. Distance-based linear modelling showed that these genes were the best predictors of place memory, and related to microbiota principal component (PC) 1. Neuroplasticity genes in the perirhinal cortex were also affected and related to PC1 but object memory performance was correlated with perirhinal 5HT2C expression and microbiota PC3. These results show that probiotics can be beneficial in situations of gut dysbiosis where memory deficits are evident but may be detrimental in healthy subjects.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.