Gut Check: Is a Microbiome Health Startup Just Wellness Theater?

In 2020, Abhishek Chaki began having mysterious pain in his abdomen, bloody diarrhea and bouts of fatigue. Sometimes his symptoms necessitated trips to the emergency room. Other times flareups left him bedridden. “It came out of nowhere,” he says. Having read that the body is influenced by the gut microbiome—the rich, vital community of bacteria, viruses and fungi that coexist within the digestive tract—he stumbled across a startup called Viome Life Sciences Inc. He bought its standard at-home stool-testing kit, which the company uses to analyze an individual’s gut microbiome and recommend a customized diet based on their unique ...