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Comment by tossmee_awwwy | Hacker News Reader

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tossmee_awwwy·

Given the health and medical play, I think they're questionable in at least a couple of ways.

- There are no actions to be taken based on microbiome data

- There's no government oversight to the quality of their sequencing or bioinformatics

- The reviews don't indicate the kits are useful https://www.highya.com/ubiome-reviews

Maybe a good comparison would be if Theranos gave you a 'subjective wellness score' instead of standard test results

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You summed up my concerns better than I could.

I remember when uBiome launched out of UCSF. I remember thinking “ok, they’ll sequence your microbiome and then...what exactly?”

I gave my data files from uBiome to a microbiologist and was told 'these data are too low in quality to analyze'

Yikes.

To be honest, the microbiome space is interesting and may hold promise for therapeutics - and maybe uBiome will be a leader in it.

But there is a very good chance that nothing will come of this whatsoever.

a fantasy: I get intestinal distress from food/water while on vacation. I take antibiotics to clear the problem. At a later date, I have a fecal transplant [0]. It couldn't be mine, because that was the site of the problem. Instead, I order a culture that matches my previous microbiome distribution.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/probiotics-if-you-do...

I think to do this, you'd need data points that don't yet exist: if your microbiome changes from antibiotic use, will you suffer health effects (beyond infection with a disease causing bacteria like C. difficle)?

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