2023-10-03 12:00:01
Building on the general public’s enthusiasm for microbiota, medical biology laboratories or “specialized” companies offer fecal microbiota tests at high prices. These tests, carried out on stool self-samples, are presented as an appropriate biological examination for a first in-depth assessment of the intestinal microbiota with the promise of providing data that a doctor could exploit.
The results are sometimes accompanied by so-called “personalized” therapeutic advice, based on the results obtained. Some laboratories even go so far as to offer “regulatory” therapies promising “revitalization of the body and a return to health”, although neither the effectiveness nor the safety of these therapies have, to date, been formally demonstrated.
In reality, many challenges still need to be overcome before these “microbiota tests” can be recognized as a medical biology examination. According to the public health code, a medical biology examination is a “medical act which contributes to the prevention, screening, diagnosis or evaluation of the risk of occurrence of pathological conditions, to the therapeutic decision and management, to the determination or monitoring of the physiological state or physiopathological of the human being, except for pathological anatomy and cytology procedures..
Scientific data has made it possible to establish the importance of a balanced diet, associations between the intestinal microbiota and certain pathologies, and the influence of the intestinal microbiota on the effectiveness of certain treatments, particularly anti-cancer treatments. However, it has not been demonstrated to date that mere knowledge of an individual’s microbiota is sufficient to improve their health or even prevent disease. In the same way, numerous correlations have been established for other microbiota (cutaneous, vaginal, oral, respiratory, etc.) with different diseases, but no knowledge currently allows us to make diagnoses and accurately interpret the parameters of the microbiota. .
Considerable variability
The fundamental pitfall of “microbiota testing” lies in our current inability to precisely define what a healthy microbiota is. Several studies, involving a wide range of volunteers, have revealed that the variability of the intestinal microbiota in healthy individuals is considerable, linked in particular to diet. In fact, a large part of this variability, up to 85%, remains unexplained and the imbalance of the intestinal microbiota observed in one individual cannot be extrapolated to others.
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