Daily Probiotic May Boost Antidepressant Effects in
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- The pilot trial, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, enrolled 58 adults in India aged 60 and older with moderate depression and randomized them 1:1 to receive either a daily probiotic or a placebo for 12 weeks, followed by 12 weeks of monitoring.
- Both groups showed substantial improvement over the study period, but the probiotic group experienced somewhat greater reductions in depression and anxiety symptoms compared with placebo, while showing no clear additional gain in overall quality of life.
- Researchers assessed outcomes using psychological rating scales, serum BDNF levels (a protein involved in nerve cell growth and maintenance), and fecal microbiota profiling, finding probiotic therapy contributed to symptom improvement on multiple measures.
- Co-corresponding author Dr. Saibal Das, of the Indian Council of Medical Research – National Institute for Research in Bacterial Infections in Kolkata, said the results are 'novel' and that the team is now planning a larger-scale follow-up clinical trial.
- Co-corresponding author Abhinaba Ghosh, a physician-neuroscientist at Tata Medical Center in Kolkata, framed the work as part of a broader effort to 'develop affordable healthcare solutions and make them available to the larger population for meaningful public health impact.'
- The authors cautioned that because this was a small pilot study, larger trials are needed to determine how much benefit probiotics provide, which patients are most likely to respond, and whether the effects hold across broader populations.
Why it matters: The trial enrolled just 58 patients at a single set of Indian centers, so any clinical guidance is premature — but if a larger trial confirms the signal, an affordable, low-side-effect probiotic adjunct could matter for the many older adults whose depression doesn't fully resolve on antidepressants alone, especially in lower-resource settings where the researchers are based.
