Chapter 12 Microbiota-related biomarkers for precision medicine and drug discovery

Trillions of microbes living in your gut and on all your body surfaces play an essential role in your health. Cross-talk between your microbes and your body influences your brain and behavior. Recent clinical advances in our understanding of how the microbiome influences brain health in both neurology and psychiatry focus attention on the potential for leveraging the microbiome to improve outcomes in brain health. More research is needed to translate mechanistic findings in animal models to healthy individuals and clinical populations. In addition, the potential for microbiome-targeted therapies to treat brain diseases, alone or in combination with other treatment options, is promising. Finally, as the microbiome is an excellent readout of an individual’s biology—an integrated view of gene, environment, and lifestyle—microbiome-based biomarkers are well positioned to help researchers and clinicians advance precision health initiatives in clinical neuroscience.