To test the possible relationship between the gut and chemo brain, a lab is examining chemo’s effects on mice whose guts have been manipulated before treatment. One experiment involves feeding the mice antibiotics. The other relies on the universal practice among mice of eating their own and their roommates’ feces.

Because chemotherapy is so hard on the digestive system, causing diarrhea, nausea and anorexia, Ohio State University researchers are exploring the gut’s potential role in the «mental fog» phenomenon known as chemo brain.

«It may be that part of why cancer patients get chemo brain is because the gut is changed and is talking to the brain differently,» said Leah Pyter, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral health and an investigator in the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at Ohio State.

To test the possible relationship, Pyter’s lab is examining chemo’s effects on mice whose guts have been manipulated before treatment. One experiment involves feeding the mice antibiotics. The other relies on coprophagia — the universal practice among mice of eating their own and their roommates’ poop. In effect, the mice undergo something resembling fecal microbial transplants.

In a new study, Pyter found that housing mice who received chemo with untreated mice showed clear signs of changes to all animals’ gut bacteria. The mice receiving chemo lost less weight if they had been housed with untreated mice — meaning eating feces from non-chemo mice changed their gut bacteria and partially reversed at least one side effect of the chemotherapy.

Though any solutions are likely years away, the research goal is to identify potential ways to help fend off post-chemo cognitive problems and anxiety.

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Materials provided by Ohio State University. Original written by Emily Caldwell. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.