ReviewThe Yale journal of biology and medicine2016
The Hoops, Hopes, and Hypes of Human Microbiome Research.
Review in The Yale journal of biology and medicine, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Anorexia nervosa and microbiota: systematic review and critical appraisal.Eating and weight disorders : EWD · 2023Pooled it
- Gut Healthism: The Penetrating Gaze and Depoliticising Forces of Direct-to-Consumer Microbiome Testing Kits.Sociology of health & illness · 2025Article
- Awareness of human microbiome may promote healthier lifestyle and more positive environmental attitudes.Communications medicine · 2025Article
- Gut health, the microbiome and dietary choices: An exploration of consumer perspectives.Nutrition & dietetics : the journal of the Dietitians Association of Australia · 2023Article
- Article
- Host-microbe interactions and outcomes in multiple myeloma and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.Cancer metastasis reviews · 2022Review
- Role of Gut Microbiome in Autism Spectrum Disorder and Its Therapeutic Regulation.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2022Review
- A standardized gnotobiotic mouse model harboring a minimal 15-member mouse gut microbiota recapitulates SOPF/SPF phenotypes.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Article
- Article
- Profiling the Gastrointestinal Microbiota.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2021Article
- Review
- Alteration of Gut Microbiota in Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Overview.Soa--ch'ongsonyon chongsin uihak = Journal of child & adolescent psychiatry · 2020Review
- Development of the Korean Form of the Premonitory Urge for Tics Scale: A Reliability and Validity Study.Soa--ch'ongsonyon chongsin uihak = Journal of child & adolescent psychiatry · 2020Article
- Commentary: Microbial panaceas: does development have the answer? - reflections on Cowan, Dinan, & Cryan (2020).Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2020Article
- Microbiomes for All.Frontiers in microbiology · 2020Review
- The Potential Influence of the Bacterial Microbiome on the Development and Progression of ADHD.Nutrients · 2019Review
- The Possible Role of the Microbiota-Gut-Brain-Axis in Autism Spectrum Disorder.International journal of molecular sciences · 2019Review
- Improving causality in microbiome research: can human genetic epidemiology help?Wellcome open research · 2019Review
- Help, hope and hype: ethical considerations of human microbiome research and applications.Protein & cell · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Recent developments in sequencing methods and bioinformatics analysis tools have greatly enabled the culture-independent analysis of complex microbial communities associated with environmental samples, plants, and animals. This has led to a spectacular increase in the number of studies on both membership and functionalities of these hitherto invisible worlds, in particular those of the human microbiome. The wide variety in available microbiome tools and platforms can be overwhelming, and making sound conclusions from scientific research can be challenging. Here, I will review 1) the methodological and analytic hoops a good microbiome study has to jump through, including DNA extraction and choice of bioinformatics tools, 2) the hopes this field has generated for diseases such as autism and inflammatory bowel diseases, and 3) some of the hypes that it has created, e.g., by confusing correlation and causation, and the recent pseudoscientific commercialization of microbiome research.
Indexed as
Identifiers
27698620PMC5045145What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.