Dhaka International University

The gut microbiota plays a crucial role in various physiological functions, such as the production of microbial compounds and maintaining homeostatic equilibrium by complex host-microbial interactions. However, any shift in the constitution and diversity of the microbiota or abnormal interaction with the host can prompt the development of dysbiosis. This review thus illustrates that microbial metabolites, notably short-chain fatty acids, tryptophan metabolites, bile acids, and polyamines, exert significant regulatory effects on innate and adaptive immunological processes, immune response and intestinal barrier integrity through specific receptor activation, involving TLRs, NODs, GPCRs, nuclear receptors, and Wnt/β-catenin. It further explores the disruption of host signalling pathways, caused by dysbiosis, promoting the transcription of specific genes and activating pro-inflammatory pathways. Consequently, this suggests that microbiota acts beyond general health, eventually contributing to gastrointestinal, metabolic, and neurological disorders. Lastly, this review highlights therapeutic approaches required to restore balance and uphold physiological balance.

Schizophrenia is a complex neuropsychiatric disorder with cognitive deficits and systemic physiological disturbances, including emerging links to hepatic dysfunction via the gut-liver-brain axis. Despite growing evidence, the integration of liver function biomarkers into predictive models for schizophrenia severity remains largely unexplored. This study proposes a multimodal machine learning framework combining hepatic indicators-Alanine Aminotransferase (ALT), Aspartate Aminotransferase (AST), Bilirubin, Albumin, and International Normalized Ratio (INR)-with cognitive assessment scores to enhance severity prediction. A synthetic dataset of 500 patient profiles was programmatically generated using MATLAB R2023a, simulating realistic clinical variability across demographics and biomarker distributions. Controlled missingness was introduced and imputed using moving mean methods, followed by Min-Max normalization to standardize features. Two machine learning models were developed: Random Forest for continuous severity regression and Support Vector Machine (SVM) with Error-Correcting Output Codes (ECOC) and Radial Basis Function (RBF) kernel for multiclass classification. The Random Forest regressor achieved an RMSE of 21.85, Mean Absolute Error of 17.26, and an R² of 0.70, capturing 72 % of variance. The SVM classifier attained 86.4 % accuracy, with macro-averaged precision, recall, and F1-score of 0.86, and an AUC of 0.91. Feature importance analysis revealed cognitive score, ALT, and AST as dominant predictors. Residual and confusion matrix analyses further confirmed model reliability. This integrative approach demonstrates the technical feasibility and clinical relevance of leveraging hepatic biomarkers alongside cognitive scores for schizophrenia severity assessment, offering a robust data-driven methodology for complex psychiatric evaluation.

Mitochondria are the cellular powerhouses and are considered to be central to energy metabolism, dynamics, and homeostasis. There is growing evidence that the gut microbiome regulates mitochondrial biogenesis, dynamics (fission, fusion, mitoph-agy), and bioenergetics, and that it does so by connecting bacterial metabolites and signaling molecules. This review discusses the molecular mechanisms that underlie the interplay between bacteria and mitochondria, with a particular focus on the modulation of mitochondrial activities by microbial products, including bile acids, immunological mediators, and short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). The evolutionary relationship between bacteria and mitochondria is explored, along with the implications of microbial dysbio-sis on mitochondrial dysfunction, which is linked to a variety of inflammatory, meta-bolic, and neurodegenerative disorders. Additionally, we emphasised the therapeutic potential of focusing on the microbiota to treat illnesses associated with the mitochon-dria and to restore mitochondrial health. A better understanding of the complex rela-tionship between bacteria and mitochondria can open up new avenues for disease man-agement and novel treatment possibilities.