Gut microbiome dysbiosis associated with ADHD

Key takeaways:

• There were differences in the gut microbiome dysbiosis of children with and without ADHD.
• Findings suggest the fungal mycobiome and intestinal permeability may be linked to ADHD proneness.

The gut microbiomes of children with ADHD differed from those of children without ADHD, findings published in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry showed.

Liang-Jen Wang, MD, MPH, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of child and adolescent psychiatry at Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and Chang Gung University College of Medicine in Taiwan, and colleagues enrolled 35 children with ADHD and 35 children without ADHD from the outpatient clinic at the department of child psychiatry at Chang Gung Children’s Hospital. They extracted DNA from fecal samples provided by each participant to identify fungal species in the gut microbiome.

The researchers also used an in vitro permeability assay of the Caco-2 cell layer to evaluate intestinal epithelial barrier function.

Analyses revealed differences in inter-fungal community species diversity between children with and without ADHD. For phyla specifically, children with ADHD had greater levels of Ascomycota (P = .0163) and lower levels of Basidiomycota (P = .0061) compared with children without ADHD. There were no differences between groups for species diversity within a fungal community.

Further, Candida was more abundant in children with ADHD compared with those who did not have ADHD (P = .0043), and C. albicans (P = .0106) and C. tropicalis (P = .0004) were more abundant in children with ADHD compared with children without ADHD.

Results from in vitro permeability assays showed that C. albicans increased the permeability of Caco-2 cells.

“The human body is home to a complex and diverse microbial ecosystem, and findings from this study suggest that dysbiosis of the fungal mycobiome in ADHD can influence patient health,” Wang and colleagues wrote.