Your microbiome is a community of 38 trillion tiny microbes that play an essential role in your immune development and overall health.
“If you upset this process in early life then we may have consequences later and that can lead to production of disease later in life.”
We use deep-shotgun metagenomics sequencing, the gold standard to get a comprehensive analysis you can rely on to make informed decisions
We use functional profiling to what microbes are present, how much of them are there, and what they’re actually doing
We use strain-level identification and precision science to detect and confirm microbes' transference, probiotics impact, and more
Our team is engaged in ongoing research to push the boundaries of microbiome understanding and its relationship with these conditions. Our research efforts include our own clinical study, which you will be able to sign up to participate starting soon:
“Imagine a world where you will take your baby to a health care check. They will routinely monitor the gut microbiome development....
If any disruptions are noted, a tailor-made product to restore the gut microbiota will be prescribed. The onset of any chronic diseases will be extremely rare.”
Through trimesters and milestones during your baby’s 1,000 days, we get you there.
We offer medically reviewed guides that are dialed into your unique test results.
We’re geeky and we embrace it. Our team distills the latest science so that you don’t have to.
Discover how Tiny Health is pioneering gut health testing for moms, babies and kids.
Check out these key research papers to learn more about the intricacies of microbiome health.
Researchers analyzed the gut microbiota of 576 healthy, full-term babies and their mothers. They found that the mode of delivery is the driving factor shaping the composition of gut microbiota in the first month of life and up to 1 year of age.
Researchers tracked down bacterial species - down to the level of strains and genes - transmitted from a mother to her child during birth. These findings confirm transmission of (health) microbes from mother to child and highlight the importance of vertical transmission.
Delivery mode and gut microbial changes correlate with an increased risk of childhood asthma.
In a study showing that gut bacteria are important to protect against food allergies, researchers transplanted gut bacteria from babies – both healthy and those with cow’s milk allergy – into “germ-free” mice. These are mice without microbes that are kept in a sterile environment, making it easy to clearly see the effects of transplanted bacteria. As it turns out, mice colonized with microbes from healthy babies were protected from an allergic reaction when later exposed to cow’s milk, the most common food allergy in children.
Researchers found that there are four key bacteria that, if present at 3 months of age, drastically reduce the risk of developing asthma, suggesting a protective effect.
In this study, researchers found that the newborn gut microbiome directly impacts the developing immune system. A dysbiotic newborn gut microbiota, characterized by the depletion of beneficial Bifidobacteria, Lactobacillus, Faecalibacterium, and Akkermansia, led to a dysfunction in T cell populations, influencing the susceptibility to childhood allergic asthma.
Hydrolyzed protein formula - with additional prebiotics - has the potential to change the gut microbiome of babies who are at a high risk of developing allergies. The addition of prebiotics to formula supported the development of a baby’s microbiome, helping it to resemble the gut of a breastfed baby and potentially protecting against the development of allergies later in life.
Using stool samples from the Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young (TEDDY) study, one of the largest datasets on the infant microbiome scientists concluded that during the developmental stage (3-14 months), breastfeeding was the most significant factor associated with microbiome composition, with higher levels of healthy Bifidobacterium bacteria. Microbiome diversity increased after weaning as the infants consumed a greater variety of foods.
In this study, nearly 11,000 stool samples from 783 children were analyzed to try to understand how early gut microbiome can impact Type 1 diabetes. Researchers found that infants without Type 1 diabetes have more microbial genes related to fermentation and production of short-chain fatty acids, which are beneficial to gut health and immune function.
In this cohort study of 935 mother-infant pairs, infants born to mothers with overweight or obesity were more likely to be overweight at ages 1 and 3 years compared to infants born to mothers with normal weight. In addition, infants delivered by c-section had double the odds for developing childhood overweight or obesity compared to infants delivered vaginally.
Babies born to mothers with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) present an unhealthy bacterial gut composition up to at least 3 months of life, characterized by the absence of healthy Bifidobacteria. This unhealthy microbiome led to important changes in the adaptive immune system of the gut in germ-free mice, highlighting the importance of a microbiome-based intervention during early infancy, thus reducing the risk of developing IBD.