Gut bacteria from people with schizophrenia lead to schizophrenic-like traits and abnormal brain glutamate signaling when transplanted into mice whereas animals transplanted with gut bacteria from healthy people behaved normally.

The gut microbiome from people with schizophrenia was less diverse than healthy controls and appeared to contain specific bacterial species that were so distinct from healthy controls that researchers were able to identify which people had schizophrenia based off fecal samples alone.

The next step in this research would be to see if fecal transplantation from a healthy individual could ameliorate some symptoms of schizophrenia in people with this condition.