Correlations between human behavior and mood, and the fecal microbiota composition

Access to EGA study: EGAS00001001704 / Lifelines-DEEP

I. BACKGROUND & SIGNIFICANCE
A. Background information on condition or problem to be studied: systematic review and meta-analysis that aims to explore the human intestinal microbial taxonomic changes associated with human emotions, with the objective of identifying underlying signatures and pathways. Includes 48 studies with human subjects wherein emotional states have been correlated to intestinal microbial taxa. The emotional states in scope include depressive symptoms, anxiety, disruptive emotions, emotional reappraisal and reward processing, fear, high intensity pleasure, neurotic tendencies, positive emotions, stress, self-judgment and empathy, and trauma. 
II. STUDY OBJECTIVE(S); INCLUDING SPECIFIC AIMS AND/OR HYPOTHESES
This systematic review and meta-analysis aims to consolidate the correlations between human behavioral/ mood states and fecal microbial Operational Taxonomic Unit (OTU) compositions. It also attempts to quantify these trends in terms of the niche functional pathways that the intestinal microbiota collectively impact in response to an psychological stimulus (i.e., behavior/mood states). In summary, this systematic review and meta analysis will investigate intestinal microbial taxonomic changes associated with human emotions, with the objective of identifying underlying signatures and pathways. 
III. METHODS
 A. Study Design: 
1.    No direct human subject enrollment and/or data collection will be done.
2.    Data collected for the study would be performed by contacting the corresponding authors of studies that have already collected fecal microbiota rRNA sequencing / shotgun analysis, demographic data and psychological/ behavioral scores of human subjects. The subject data collected for the purposes of this study would be de-identified. 
3.    The study does not include any interventions.
 B. Study Population: The study includes human subject data of all genders and ages ranging from 4-year-old and above. It includes data where the subjects are either healthy, but where behavioral / mood data were collected or with psychological disorders with behavioral symptoms. 
C. Study Procedures
The data collection for the study would be performed by contacting the corresponding authors of studies that have already collected fecal microbiota rRNA sequencing / shotgun analysis, demographic data and psychological/ behavioral scores of human subjects. The subject data collected for the purposes of this study would be de-identified. Therefore, consent is not collected from the original subjects. The data would be collected over a period of approximately four months. 
IV. DATA COLLECTION
Behavioral data collected from prospective studies would consist of de-identified outcomes of instruments used by each individual studies.
V. DATA ANALYSIS
 A. Sample Size Considerations
B. Statistical Methodology includes the following.
•    Data curation
•    Raw data processing
•    Taxonomic and functional profiling 
•    The above applies to all 16S data projects and all shotgun data projects excluding the shotgun data 
•    Downstream analysis, exploratory plots, and statistics
o    Assimilate non-similar projects’ data together with similar projects’ data
o    Batch effect correction
o    Alpha Diversity
o    Community composition

Ayman Mukerji, MS, MSW, New York University - a researcher with several peer reviewed publications, James Doty, MD - Professor of Neurosurgery, Stanford University