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The British Gut Project

S

Sasha

Fine, thank you
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17,863
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UK
New one on me - we have a crowdsourced British Gut Project, apparently, in which people in the UK mail their samples to London who then, embarrassingly, have to mail them to the US to get them analysed (it's an offshoot of the American Gut Project.

This was mentioned on BBC Radio 4's Today programme (major national news programme) this morning, with its originator, Dr Tim Spector, taking a pop at the result of a junk food diet on the microbiome.

http://www.gutmicrobiotaforhealth.com/dr-tim-spector-launching-british-gut-project-7240

Interestingly, they're interested in people doing interventions and comparing results before and after.

Possibilities here for ME/CFS research and for those experimenting with pre/probiotics?

@Sidereal, @adreno?
 
Thinktank

Thinktank

Senior Member
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1,640
Location
Europe
@adreno, you can ship your sample directly to the american gut project. They take samples from all countries, the only hassle is finding a courier that will take your poo-in-a-box but usually fedex will do it.
 
S

Sasha

Fine, thank you
Messages
17,863
Location
UK
Thinktank said:
@adreno, you can ship your sample directly to the american gut project. They take samples from all countries, the only hassle is finding a courier that will take your poo-in-a-box but usually fedex will do it.
Click to expand...

I've sent a faecal sample to the US via Fedex and it requires special packaging and special paperwork. You'll need to contact them ahead of time, tell them that you want to send a faecal sample, and they'll tell you what you need to do. The courier will then come to your house to collect it.

It might be cheaper for you to send your sample to the UK.
 
adreno

adreno

PR activist
Messages
4,841
I emailed with ubiome, and they told me I can regular mail my sample. That will certainly be much cheaper than using FedEx.
 
S

Sidereal

Senior Member
Messages
4,856
I suppose my question would be what are you going to do with the results? It's not like you would be doing anything different than you are right now seeing as no one has any idea what the results mean, how to interpret them or how to act on them. Seems like money spent for no actionable information.
 
snowathlete

snowathlete

Senior Member
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5,374
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UK
Like @adreno says, uBiome works out cheaper and easier so unless the BGP offers something unique such as analysis of grouped samples then it wouldn't seem worth it.

@Sidereel, I've found my uBiome results extremely useful in directing my efforts to heal my gut.
 
S

Sasha

Fine, thank you
Messages
17,863
Location
UK
snowathlete said:
Like @adreno says, uBiome works out cheaper and easier so unless the BGP offers something unique such as analysis of grouped samples then it wouldn't seem worth it.

@Sidereel, I've found my uBiome results extremely useful in directing my efforts to heal my gut.
Click to expand...

Did you? I couldn't fathom my uBiome results.
 
Hip

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,857
One of the issues with the uBiome and American Gut labs is that their results can vary significantly if you take two fecal samples from different parts of the same stool. See the following article, where the author sent away three different samples from the same piece of stool, to be analyzed by uBiome and American Gut:

Which bacteria are in my poop? It depends where you look

This variation probably occurs because the food you eat makes a great deal of difference as to which bacteria grow on that day, and presumably one stool could comprise the food from more than one meal, or could comprise different parts of the same meal (main course versus dessert).

The good news, though, was that uBiome and American Gut produced similar results from a piece of feces taken from exactly the same spot on the stool.



Perhaps the only thing of reliable scientific value in these high-throughput sequencing microbiome analyses is the actual species of bacteria you have present; the relative population sizes of these species, which can vary from day to day, and vary even within the same stool, probably has little meaning.
 
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jepps

jepps

Senior Member
Messages
519
Location
Austria
If you are interested, I can post a sample of an Excel file of the Ubiome stool test.
If quantities differ or not in various samples, I am interested in detecting certain important strains or not (Bifidos, Faecalibacterium prausnitzi, Roseburia, Akkermansia etc.) If they are detected, it´s a good sign, and they can be feeded. Also interesting is the quantity of bacterias in summary - how much various bacteria are in my stool?
Sadly I do not know, whether the analysis is from me or my husband - one sample received Ubiome broken, and we did not mark, which registered sample was this of the actual analysis.
Ubiome was very professional, and sent me a new kit, which I sent again to Ubiome. So the next analysis will be definetly mine:)​
 
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