Fish oil ameliorates neuropsychiatric behaviors and gut dysbiosis by elevating selected microbiota-derived metabolites and tissue tight junctions in rats under chronic sleep deprivation

• Published in: Food & function Vol. 13; no. 5; pp. 2662 - 268
• Main Authors: Lai, Wen-De, Tung, Te-Hsuan, Teng, Chu-Yun, Chang, Chia-Hsuan, Chen, Yang-Ching, Huang, Hui-Yu, Lee, Hsin-Chien, Huang, Shih-Yi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Royal Society of Chemistry 07.03.2022
• Subjects: Animals; Anxiety; Behavior; Behavior, Animal - drug effects; Blood circulation; Blood levels; Cognitive ability; Colon; Corticosteroids; Cytokines; Dietary Supplements; Digestive system; Digestive tract; Disease Models, Animal; Dysbacteriosis; Fatty acids; Field tests; Fish oils; Fish Oils - administration & dosage; Fish Oils - chemistry; Fish Oils - pharmacology; Fishes; Gastrointestinal Microbiome - drug effects; Goblet cells; Health problems; Inflammation; Injuries; Intestinal microflora; Lipopolysaccharides; Maze Learning - drug effects; Metabolites; Microbiomes; Microbiota; Microorganisms; Open-field behavior; Probiotics; Probiotics - administration & dosage; Probiotics - chemistry; Probiotics - pharmacology; Proteins; Public health; Rats; Rats, Wistar; Rodents; Sleep Deprivation; Tight junctions; Tight Junctions - drug effects
• ISSN: 2042-6496; 2042-650X
• DOI: 10.1039/d2fo00181k

Neuropsychiatric behaviors caused by sleep deprivation (SD) are severe public health problems in modern society worldwide. This study investigated the effect of fish oil on neuropsychiatric behaviors, barrier injury, microbiota dysbiosis, and microbiota-derived metabolites in SD rats. The rats subjected to SD had significantly elevated blood levels of corticosteroid and lipopolysaccharides and exhibited anxiety-like behavior in the open field test, depression-like behavior in the forced swim test, and cognitive impairment in the Morris water maize test. We observed that the upregulation of proinflammatory cytokines in the SD rats resulted in colonic epithelial barrier injury including a decreased number of goblet cells and increased expression of selected tight junction proteins in the gut and brain. The gut microbiome status revealed a significant decrease in the microbial diversity in the SD rats, especially in probiotics. By contrast, a fish oil-based diet reversed SD-induced behavioral changes and improved the epithelial barrier injury and dysbiosis of the microbiota in the colon. These findings could be attributable to the increase in probiotics and short-chain fatty acid (SCFAs) production, improvement in selected intestinal barrier proteins, increase in SCFA receptor expression, and decrease in blood circulation proinflammatory status due to fish oil supplementation. Fish oil-based diet reduced anxiety and depression behavior in rats under chronic SD. Possibly due to increase in probiotics production, butyric acid content and GPR43, improvement in the intestinal barriers and decrease in blood circulation proinflammatory status.