The gut-brain connection: probiotic supplementation to alleviate cognitive decline and inflammation in rodent models of pretangle tau and stress
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The microbiota-gut-brain axis is a crucial link to peripheral and central nervous systems, with gut health implicated in health and disease, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and stress. The objective of this dissertation is to explore the role of strengthening the gut microbiota in brain health and early-AD pathologies. First, I will investigate the effects of probiotic supplementation on cognitive function, brain inflammation, and gut microbiota composition. We employed a locus coeruleus hyperphosphorylated pretangle tau rat model, which closely resembles preclinical AD. Rats with pseudophosphorylated human tau in the LC showed deficits in spatial and olfactory learning, increased microglia and astrocyte activity, blood-brain barrier (BBB) leakage, and elevated peripheral inflammation. Probiotic supplementation increased gut microbiome diversity, optimized bacterial composition, and ameliorated cognitive deficits. A reduction in inflammation and glycogen synthase kinase 3 beta (GSK-3β) activity in the hippocampus of female rats was observed, suggesting gut health modulation as a potential therapeutic strategy in preclinical AD, and providing a possible mechanism underlying AD sex differences. Second, I examined the effects of probiotics prior to chronic stress or enrichment on cognitive function and brain health. Probiotics prevented stress-induced spatial memory impairments and enhanced learning under enrichment conditions. We propose this is linked to increased gut microbiome diversity and eubiosis, which was observed in our animals. Probiotics prevented increased levels of the microglia marker ionized calcium-binding adaptor molecule 1 (Iba-1) found in stressed rats and showed differences in BBB integrity and tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) levels in the hippocampus between stress and enrichment groups, with beneficial effects observed in enriched animals. These findings highlight the potential of probiotics to enhance cognitive function and brain health through modulation of the gut microbiota, offering a non-invasive therapeutic approach for AD and stress-related cognitive decline.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".