How do you use gut microbiome or gut microbiota analysis in your clinical practice, if at all?

While I am presented with microbiome analyses on a regular basis by patients, I do not believe that these are useful, as we are still not there when it comes to defining the "normal" microbiome. This indeed may vary tremendously between individuals depending on age, gender, diet, geographic location...

I don’t. We are still in the translational research stages to understand which bacteria are pathogenic, commensal, critical, etc. There is still so much we need to understand before we know what to do with this information.

I agree with Dr. @Dr. First Last.

Currently, there is no clinically validated microbiome testing and we cannot obtain clinically actionable information from this type of testing. Some points to support this:

1. There is no established "normal" for the microbiome. Part of this comes from the fact that en...

There is no significant data to guide us in that direction.

How do you politely tell patients these are current tests are essentially nonsense?