Microbiome tests sold to the public are not useful, according to an article in Science magazine. Scientists acknowledge that little is still known about how to apply that knowledge to improve human health.
However, there are a large number of companies that sell tests to understand the microbiome aimed at people with all types of ailments. The limited composition of the companies' databases makes the data non-representative and the comparisons unhelpful, say the authors of the Science article. The authors believe that inconsistencies may be due to defects in the collection and preservation of the sample.