lassesen 4:45 pm on November 13, 2019  

ThyrveInside Reports vs MicrobiomePrescription Reports

This post is looking at Thyrve Subject Reports vs MicrobiomePrescription reports. Interpretation depends on which studies you use and methodologies. There is no right or wrong answer.

With that said, having received my first Thryve Report, I am curious on how they compare (when there are tough equivalents).

Gut Score

The first item is that Thryve is building their report on “compared to those of the healthy population from the American Gut Project“. Oops we have an apples to crab apples scenario, different equipment, different processes. I am disappointed that they do not have a reference using only their equipment and samples. uBiome attempted to do that (but some employees submitted their pet’s microbiome into the mix!)

So I am healthier than the average person
I am 11% above a healthy score — what does that mean? How was healthy determined?
Microbiome Prescription gives a percentile score. The numbers are in conceptual agreement

Likelihood Analysis

Reviewing this page, I chuckled because they do not give a single likelihood (a probability measure). They simply give your numbers against the average range.

They cite two bacteria only and it is unclear if high or low will cause the pain.

While on MP we have some 17 bacteria associations with where the peak values are.

We are in agreement for Faecalibacterium but Lactobacillus did not reach statistical significance

And on MP we have the following being statistically very significant for bloating:

  • Butyricicoccus (genus)
  • Faecalibacterium (genus)
  • Ruminococcaceae (family)
  • Subdoligranulum (genus)

On MP, well, we have many bacteria identified. Lactobacillaceae (family) is there, but it’s child Lactobacillus (genus) is not. Bifidobacterium is not.

Likelihood Analysis Bottom Line

It looks like Thryve’s information is very old and very stale. The information may well be coming from studies that did not use 16s to obtain populations.

They have been entrusted with a warehouse of data from their customers and have not been good stewards of it (I am an old fashion person that grew up with a strong understanding of and importance of stewardship).

Your Gut Bacteria

Thryve attempts to give health benefits and associated diseases. Again, they seem to have old stale information.

http://microbiomeprescription.com/library/details?taxon=1239
http://microbiomeprescription.com/library/details?taxon=28890
http://microbiomeprescription.com/library/details?taxon=256845

Probiotics

They do not appear to make recommendation solely off the microbiome. I speculate they take the health information and look up based on that information.

For me, they came up with:

  • Lactobacillus reuteri
  • Lactobacillus rhamnosus
  • Lactobacillus casei 
  • Bifidobacterium lactis

The MicrobiomePrescript site came up with:

And near the top of my avoid list

Lactobacillus rhamnosus did not show up.

We both had the same microbiome data. Microbiome Prescription does provide the studies that the suggestions were based on. Thryve does not.

Bottom Line

ThryveAlive works well for providing reports on your microbiome. Given the demonstrated staleness of the data on their site (it costs a lot of money to keep current unless you have someone willing to donate the many hours for the public good).

Most microbiome providers likely fall into the same staleness trap. They put the effort in to get their website up and looking good, then they coast along without keep current because they do not wish to spend the money to keep current (especially true if there is venture capital backing the firm).

NOTE: The data on MicrobiomePrescription is available for Commercial Licensing, see this post.