Free nasal microbiome test/study at uBiome

Has anyone ever heard back from these people? My kit still says 'Pending' on their website, after their having recieved my kit back in January! As I live outside the US, the postage for the kit was quite expensive, and I feel like I've wasted money which I can ill afford. The only contact I've had from them is that they keep spamming me with emails to buy their other products - which I have no intention of doing after this experience. Argh.
 
Has anyone ever heard back from these people? My kit still says 'Pending' on their website, after their having recieved my kit back in January! As I live outside the US, the postage for the kit was quite expensive, and I feel like I've wasted money which I can ill afford. The only contact I've had from them is that they keep spamming me with emails to buy their other products - which I have no intention of doing after this experience. Argh.
I spoke with someone there earlier this year by email. I'll email this afternoon and see if they can give us an idea of how much longer the wait will be. It sure has been an unexpected long wait.
 
Last edited:
Has anyone ever heard back from these people? My kit still says 'Pending' on their website, after their having recieved my kit back in January! As I live outside the US, the postage for the kit was quite expensive, and I feel like I've wasted money which I can ill afford. The only contact I've had from them is that they keep spamming me with emails to buy their other products - which I have no intention of doing after this experience. Argh.
Exactly the same here.

I wrote them 1 or 2 months ago. They said that these "special offers" who were part of a study will take longer. They would work on the probes as possible, in between the officially sold kits. So I'm expecting a LONG time.
 
Yay! Today I received my results - did anybody else, too? I never would have thought it would work out. I really thought my kit was lost on the way.
Ah, you were lucky! I heard from them today too, but with less than helpful info:
uBiome email said:
We have an update on your uBiome data. While we were processing your sample, your results were flagged by our system for a separate quality check. This typically happens when a sample has a lower than normal concentration of bacterial DNA. Please know that this does not indicate anything "wrong" with your microbiome - typically this occurs due to sampling error. If this is the first time the sample processing has been unsuccessful we will re-run your sample(s) again with this lower concentration in mind. Unfortunately, this could add several weeks to the processing time. If this is an unsuccessful re-run, please contact us at support@ubiome.com and we will get a new kit out to you immediately - free of charge.
Argh. Not very impressed after waiting six months. If sending me another kit 'free of charge' means another $20 postage from them to me plus another $5 postage from me to them, I'll have to give up and resign myself to having lost the $25 I already paid for the first kit.

How were your results, I hope they show something useful/interesting?
 
I received my results this morning, also. For my sinus sample, my Firmicules are higher than average, my Actinobacteria are lower than average, and the Proteobacteria are pretty much non-existent. The other bacteria were all less than 1%. Now I have to figure out what all of this means. I scored 3.83 out of 10 and I'm in the 14th percentile.

My throat sample was 7.73 out of 10 and in the 36th percentile.

I see my ENT on Tuesday but I don't think that any of this will mean much to him. It would appear that my sinus issues are a result of LPR (silent reflux/respiratory reflux). I will go to my grave knowing that it was Penicillin that caused my ME, allergies, and sinus issues. And now I can add reflux to that list.
 
@EzzieD and @TigerLilea, hard to tell what the results say, honestly...I will have to take a closer look at the csv files and the online report.

At this point what I seem to have understood is that my microbiome flora diversity in the nose and throat seems to be good.

@EzzieD, what a pain, really :bored: receiving that message after this time :wtf: There seems to be a danger your sample can't be analyzed...

@TigerLilea, I'm curious what your ENT doctor will say.
 
I received the nose swab result only today. Throat swab is still being processed.

I couldn't see the breakdown of bacteria, so will have to go back in and find.

Nose swab.
8.49 out of 10 for microbiome diversity.

96th percentile.

Sounds like I have lots of bacteria? Is that good or maybe that explains the chronic sinusitis? I'll have to find the full results over the weekend.
 
I don't know @Rosie, it's the same here. I guess diversity isn't so bad? But of course, depending on the bacteria...

You have to click on "Advanced" to get all found bacteria. I had to search a bit longer to find the info.

In my case, Staphylococcus and Streptococcus were in the Top 3 in the nose sample, but in the throat sample Staphylococcus is missing. (Isn't that strange?)

@TigerLilea, how did you find out that some of your bacteria are higher or lower than average?
 
I received the nose swab result only today. Throat swab is still being processed.

I couldn't see the breakdown of bacteria, so will have to go back in and find.

Nose swab.
8.49 out of 10 for microbiome diversity.

96th percentile.

Sounds like I have lots of bacteria? Is that good or maybe that explains the chronic sinusitis? I'll have to find the full results over the weekend.
I would say that your results are good, Rosie. I think that we want to have good diversity in our bacteria, which, unfortunately, I don't have. No surprise there though as I've been put on so many needless antibiotics over the years. :(
 
I don't know @Rosie, it's the same here. I guess diversity isn't so bad? But of course, depending on the bacteria...

You have to click on "Advanced" to get all found bacteria. I had to search a bit longer to find the info.

In my case, Staphylococcus and Streptococcus were in the Top 3 in the nose sample, but in the throat sample Staphylococcus is missing. (Isn't that strange?)
Thanks @Inara I saw Streptococcus but not Staphylococcus in the my nose sample. The Streptococcus wasn't high though. My sinuses were bad at the time I took the swabs so I need to go through everything they found and see if I can understand anything that may be going on.
 
I would say that your results are good, Rosie. I think that we want to have good diversity in our bacteria, which, unfortunately, I don't have. No surprise there though as I've been put on so many needless antibiotics over the years. :(
@TigerLilea I think for some of us we have microbiome changes that possibly lead us on to ME. (?) I think I have other areas of microbiome that won't be great. I would have liked to have done the 5 microbiome combo when they reduced the price earlier this year but didn't have enough spare money at the time.
 
Back
Top Bottom