The Effect of Probiotic Consumption on Depression: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Depression has become a worldwide concern as the number keeps increasing day by day regardless of the countries. The availability of several of treatment and drugs such as psychotherapy and antidepressant help the patients to control and treat the depression. The problem statement for this study is the findings from previous studies on the probiotic efficacy to treat depression are not consistent. The objectives of this study are to provide precise data which focuses on the significance effects of the probiotics on depression based on existing research and to determine how different probiotic strains can give a significant health impact on depression.The methods used in this study are search strategy using online databases PubMed and Google Scholar, then PRISMA checklist, inclusion criteria, exclusion criteria and statistical evaluation, RevMan Web used in both fixed and random effects. The results based on data in journals of randomized control trial (RCT) will show the efficacy of different strains of probiotics on treating depression, which is the depression score mean ± decreases with the consumption on probiotics.The forest plots of show all 12 included studies are not significant as the p-values are more than 0.05, p.0.05 in overall. However, some studies show some effectiveness of probiotic using Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HADRS) MD= -5.02,95% CI [-9.25,0.79] and MD= -5.90 ,95% CI [-7.55, -4.25]. Forest plot of Montgomery–Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) shows only one study shows a significant reduction; MD = -4.17 [-8.45,0.11]. Both forest plot Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and forest plot of Beck's Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) shows significant but has small due to some limitations such as small sample size and changes of nutritional habits among patients in hospitals.This research concludes probiotics are potentially giving benefits in alleviating depression. One study shows the best results among of all 12 included studies which shows a great reduction of depression scale with a single -strain probiotic. However, the results are not significance due to limitation experienced by the researchers such as short duration of intervention of the study.