The effect of fecal microbiota transplantation on psychiatric symptoms among patients with inflammatory bowel disease: an experimental study.

Abstract

The severity of anxiety, depression and obsession in IBD patients decreased after FMT. The decrease in psychiatric symptoms may result from the direct neuropsychiatric effect of FMT (primary effect), but also the improvement of gastrointestinal symptoms (secondary effect). Another possibility is that this result is independent of these two conditions. Therefore, the results of our study are not sufficient to establish a cause-effect relationship. More randomised controlled trials with larger samples from patients with anxiety or depression but without comorbid physical illnesses are needed to generalise these results.