Psychological stress alters gut microbes and ages blood stem cells, mouse study suggests
Psychological stress is increasingly recognized as a risk factor for certain health conditions, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes, especially when paired with an impaired immune response. In a study in Cell Stem Cell, researchers describe a mechanism in mice that explains this association: Psychological stress speeds aging-like changes in the body's blood-forming stem cells in the bone marrow—called hematopoietic stem cells—by altering the intestinal microbiota.
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"Our research shows how stress-responsive brain regions regulate the balance of the intestinal microbiota, which ultimately affects the function of hematopoietic stem cells," says senior author Meng Zhao of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China.
Previous studies have shown that chronic stress influences immune function and the formation of immune cells in the bone marrow largely through inflammatory pathways and adrenergic receptors, which drive the body's "fight-or-flight" response. But how these stress signals were transmitted from the brain to the bone marrow was unclear.
In the new study, the researchers used four different mouse models of stress to study interactions among the brain, intestine and bone marrow. They confirmed that chronic stress reduced activity in two brain regions—the medial prefrontal cortex and the periaqueductal gray.