Bridging the Educational Gap: Integrating Gut–Brain Axis Science into Health Professional Curricula to Improve Clinical Care

The gut–brain axis represents a bidirectional communication network linking the gastrointestinal tract, resident microbiota, immune system, endocrine signaling, and central nervous system. Over the past decade, advances in molecular, neuroimmune, and metabolic research have established the gut–brain axis as a key regulator of multisystem health, with implications for gastrointestinal, neuropsychiatric, metabolic, and neurodegenerative disorders. Despite this expanding body of mechanistic and translational evidence, health professions education has been slow to integrate gut–brain axis science into core curricula, often maintaining compartmentalized, organ-based teaching models that limit systems-level clinical reasoning. This narrative review synthesizes current molecular and cellular evidence underlying gut–brain communication, including microbial metabolite signaling, immune modulation, neural pathways, and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis interactions. The review further examines the clinical relevance of these mechanisms across functional gastrointestinal disorders, mood and stress-related conditions, metabolic disease, and neurodegeneration. Building on this scientific foundation, the manuscript identifies structural gaps in health professional training that hinder the translation of gut–brain axis knowledge into clinical practice. Drawing from contemporary medical education and systems-based learning literature, the review proposes strategies for integrating gut–brain axis science across foundational coursework, clinical instruction, and competency-based assessment. Emphasis is placed on interdisciplinary teaching, case-based learning, and evaluation frameworks that promote integrative diagnostic reasoning rather than isolated disease categorization. By aligning educational structures with current molecular and systems biology, this review argues that enhanced microbiome and gut–brain literacy can improve diagnostic coherence, patient counseling, preventive care, and translational application of emerging therapies. Integrating gut–brain axis science into health professional education represents a necessary step toward preparing clinicians for contemporary, multisystem biomedical care.