Vaginal Health Test Walkthrough - Tiny Health

My name is Emily Serta and I'm a, I'm a microbiome specialist here with Tiny Health. I'm going to go over the vaginal test to orient you to the report. So here we can see a vaginal test for a pregnant female who is 27 weeks pregnant. Here you can see the microbiome summary score which is 36 out of 100. That score does relate to all of the findings in the test, all of these metrics and it, it's based on an algorithm that takes them all into account. It weighs some heavier than others to arrive at the score here in the red. I do describe that as below as in the need support section. Now as we look at this report, you will be able to scroll down and see what the main findings were for the report. We can see a low Lactobacillus level, high amounts of Gardnerella and some disruptive microbes here that are related to bacterial vaginosis. You can also, if you want to scroll in and look at the entire report, come over to the See all metrics button, this purple button here. So I'm going to click in there and what this is going to do is going to walk us through all of the, all of the metrics in this report. You will notice that in our test green is for great normal results will appear gray. So this is kind of typical results, whereas the green is more optimal and then the yellow would be like it needs improving and the red is definitely needs support. We need to take action. So as we get in here we can see in this report we are reporting on Lactobacillus. This is very, very important for the vaginal microbiome. You can see if I click into the metric you will get a range here and the vaginal microbiome should comprise of 90% or more lactobacillus. This really acidifies this environment. It helps to ward off disruptive microbes. You will be able to see if your patient tests over time what their previous scores look like so that you can start to see trends in the treatment that you're giving them. Further down in the section we'll also be able to see the species in the sample. So we can see this individual has only one species of Lactobacillus showing up. It is Lactobacillus iners. And this iners we can click into it and read about is not a super stable microbe, which is why it's yellow and it actually is linked to a lot of the bacteria that drive bv. So in this you'll be able to scroll down and see all of that information about what, what exact species of Lactobacillus are present in your patient sample. Down below you will see some of the common Lactobacillus that we typically find in the vaginal microbiome. And you can see only the INERS is showing up for this individ. The looking at the beneficial bacteria is really, really important because we can find out what's wrong. We can, we can find out that there's Gardnerella and treat but without looking at the entire environment. We're really not setting the environment up so that that disruption doesn't come right back. So by optimizing those beneficials and helping to drive out some of these disruptive microbes, we will kind of be able to, to help this environment along. In the disruptive microbes you'll see that we are looking at BV associated bacteria within these. If we click in and we can see the Gardnerella again, you're going to get that reference range. We would love to have this below 6% and because it's high and it's in this need support range on the right hand side you will have action items that are meant to help you with this met. So for example, pairing an oral and vaginal Lactobacillus to help support vaginal health is an action that we recommend and that's because we want that Lactobacillus to come in and really take over the space here. When you click into the action card you will be able to see some information about using these different products. You'll be able to see what, why we're recommending them and then down below there will be tips, the specific strains that we're looking for in vaginal suppository versus an oral probiotic. So that if you have your own favorite products you can, you can kind of cross check this and see if that will work for your patient. Down below we do offer some recommendations if you need a jumping off point for more vaginal probiotics or oral probiot. Do not make any commission or have any association with these companies except to say that we have seen them move some of the metrics on our test and these just go to the manufacturer site. So here I'm going to back out again. You can see we're also looking at a number of things for BV aerobic bacteria. We're looking at the Candida yeasts, sexually transmitted microbes, urea plasma and then this individual because she is pregnant. If we have trying to conceive her pregnancy. We do look for GBS as well. So those are all the metrics that we are looking at here. You can also come out to the main page and go over to the right where it says microbiome breakdown. And in this breakdown you'll be able to see the community state type of this microbiome. The community state type is determined by the dominant bacteria in the vaginal microbiome. So here we can see this individual has 91% disruptive microbes and high levels of this Gardnerella. And so that is a community state type 4B. And you can, you can click into this and learn more about those. You can see what that type is, is also linked to down below in the vaginal microbiome section for the microbiome breakdown, you'll be able to see again the layout of this microbiome. So 92% disruptive. We can see protective variable are kind of commensals that we would like to have there at low levels, but not at levels and then unknown. This individual has zero. But those are just microbes that we know they exist, but we don't quite know enough to classify them yet. So down below you'll be able to see everything in this vaginal microbiome report and you can click into any of these and learn a little bit more about the species. If you're not familiar out in the main results section, you can also go down to the action plan. This is a quick way to get to the actions recommended based on what's found in your sample. Sometimes you may have a report that it has a lot going on and a lot of actions here and that can feel overwhelming for the patient. And so understanding that you can come in to these actions and use the bookmark section. So maybe you would like the individual to look at this and look at this, then those bookmarks will be replicated here in the bookmark section of the test and you can let your patient know to check out the bookmarks and you'll discuss the rest of the test later. And it really can reduce the overwhelm. So I believe that is everything here. Oh, further down underneath all the metrics, we can look at the condition associations. So condition associations, these are if somebody puts in the survey data that they are going through menopause or they have a history of bacterial vaginosis or current diagnosis of this, they're experiencing UTIs. If they're putting any of these things in our survey data, we've looked at our internal data to see what those patterns look like. In the report, and so then we can draw different insights. This is not diagnostic, but these are associations. So bacterial vaginosis, for example, could potentially be helped by rectifying the lactobacillus marker. So increasing that significantly, reducing that gardnerella and reducing these other microbes that are showing up the prevotella. The fact that that is there and within the green is actually a positive thing. So for any of these, including the menopause insight, you will be able to click into here, you can read a little bit about the association, how it's interpreted, and it gives you a jumping off point to help your patient. Okay, I hope this was a helpful look at our vaginal microbe microbiome test. If you run into any questions, we would love to have you book a consult call with us so that we could answer your questions directly.