Free nasal microbiome test/study at uBiome

I'd like to get my gut bacteria done sometime. Like you, I can't afford to do so right now. I'd bet money that my ME is related to changes in my gut microbiome after taking antibiotics.

 

@EzzieD I missed reading an email from Ubiome and got the same message you did for my throat swab. They are testing it again, so could be a long wait again.

Next time I will go for the 5 microbiome if it comes up again at reduced price.

 

Same here. Everything changed for me when I got an infection that changed my microbiome. I think this is where it all started for me as well.

My microbiome changes were significant but no one knew much about all this back then. I noticed years later that 'psychological ?' had been written down in my medical notes. I was given a pessary antibiotic for the infection and everything changed after that.

 

Oh no, that's a shame, I'm sorry to hear it happened to you too. In my case, they didn't specify whether it was the throat or the nasal swab, maybe that means it was both?? I did follow their instructions on how to take the samples, so am not sure how a 'sampling error' would have occurred. Maybe I just don't have enough DNA, ha ha. Frustrating!

 

I didn't think the area for the throat swab was a good one but what do I know. When I was taking the swab it felt like I wasn't getting much of anything. To me it was more the back wall of the mouth not the throat. I'm sure they called it the throat swab.

 

Finally just got the results of the throat swab, after only a nine-months wait! They said the nose swab was unable to be processed and to contact them for a re-do, but being outside the US and the postage costing a fortune, I'm not going to re-do. The throat results, if anyone wants to compare, show:

Now to go off and try to find out what it all means!

 

That's really annoying that your throat probe couldn't be analyzed. And to wait 9 months for that...

 

What was your diversity percentage?

 

Sorry, I don't see anything about 'diversity percentage' in the report page - where would I find that? There is a section called Microbial Diversity in a list on the left side of the screen but it's only available for gut microbe tests, and everything else I click on also requires purchasing an additional kit. The only other section that works without having to buy an additional product is called Advanced, which lets you look at percentages of bacteria according to genus, class, etc - am not sure if that's what you mean?

 

They have changed the website since I got my test results. The 'diversity percentage' was the first thing that would pop onto the screen. I can't find it now. My nose diversity was in the 14th percentile and my throat diversity was in the 36th percentile.

 

I plan on getting my gut bacteria evaluated, however, I don't think I will use uBiome if I can find a better company for testing. So far I am not impressed with them.

 

This might change if you pay for your analysis. This one was free, and they said it would take longer (I would say due to low priority).

 

Ah, OK, that's why I can't find it! I did think the format looked like it had changed since I last looked a couple of months ago.

And yes, I'm not terribly impressed either - when I checked their site after six months of no results, there was a pop-up asking me to rate them on a scale of 1-10 as to whether I would recommend them to friends, to which I rated 1 with a comment that I'd been waiting six months and had heard nothing from them except constant spam to buy more products, and that I don't feel able to recommend a service on that basis. To my surprise I got an email in reply from one of their customer service folks, who apologised and said that because the sniffle test was a freebie, it would take 'slightly longer' to get the results than the paid products. Well, if nine months wait is only slightly longer than it takes to get the results of paid tests, then I'm not at all keen to try again!

 

It will be interesting to see if I hear back from them. I gave them a "0".

 

Who do we go to to find out what these results might mean? I have an ENT appointment coming up next week. I'll take my nose and throat results to him/her to begin with.

I finally got my throat swab result back too. Mine were quite different to yours. I'll try and get mine up or will PM you mine if you are interested.

 

If there are other members who would like to compare but privately as a group let me know by PEM (PM)!

 

I have no idea what to make of my results, I did kind of think the site would provide at least a little commentary on what the results mean, as many other testing labs do. I Googled on the names of the bacteria listed in my post above but nothing much turned up. But if you're seeing an ENT soon, yes, that would be an excellent opportunity for getting the results interpreted! Interesting that your results were very different from mine - not knowing what any of it means, I don't know what to make of that. But if you want to set up a group to compare results, it could be interesting to see how they vary, especially if someone has a friendly ENT they could ask about it (I don't, unfortunately).

 

@EzzieD I had the same bacteria Vagococcus at 7.4% as you in the throat swab results. Everything else was different to yours.

Did anyone else have Vagococcus?

I had it in my nose swab as well at 1.0%

 

What percentage of Firmicutes did your nose sample show? Mine came in at 77.37% which seems somewhat high to me.

 

Firmicutes in my nose sample were 45.49%.