Gut microbiota and postpartum depression: a Mendelian randomization study.

Background: Increasing evidence suggests a correlation between intestinal microbiota and the gut-brain axis; however, the causal relationship between gut microbiota and postpartum depression (PPD) remains unclear.

Methods: In this study, a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) design was employed to analyze the GWAS data of gut microorganisms from the Mibiogen database and PPD data from the UK biobank. Various statistical methods, including inverse variance weighted, MR-Egger, weighted median, weighted model, and MR-PRESSO, were utilized to investigate the causal relationship between gut microbiota and PPD.