What are microbiome associations?

Microbiome associations are microbes that show a relationship with a certain condition. For
example, they will be at higher relative abundance in research subjects with the condition
compared to the healthy control group.

Most studies that report microbiome associations investigate research subjects that already
have the condition, and focus on a specific age. This means that for example, populations of a
specific age demographic with a condition will have a different microbiome composition
compared to healthy controls. However, at Tiny Health, we are most interested in predicting if
conditions will occur later in life. Oftentimes, we are not sure if associations are present before
or after a condition develops. Unraveling this requires studies that take place over a longer
period of time, called longitudinal studies.

Microbiome associations do not mean that the microbiome has a direct role in the condition.
Instead it could be an indirect consequence, or even a statistical coincidence that is only
observed in the particular study.

We refer to microbiome biomarkers as strong microbiome associations that are consistently
observed across studies for specific age groups.