Parasites tested by Tiny Health

We test for Protist parasites. Protists are eukaryotes (this just means cells with a nucleus) that are not fungi, plants, or animals. They are made up of just one cell, so they aren’t visible to the naked eye. The most common protist parasites in humans are listed below. All of these protist parasites are typically picked up from contaminated food or water.

• Blastocystis is the most common genus of intestinal parasite in the United States and Canada. It can cause an infection (known as blastocystosis) with abdominal pain and diarrhea. However, people usually carry Blastocystis asymptomatically (meaning without symptoms) without even knowing it.
• Cryptosporidium, which causes cryptosporidiosis.
• Entamoeba, which causes amebiasis.
• Giardia, which causes giardiasis.
• Cyclospora cayetanensis, which causes cyclosporiasis.

These are the specific parasites that will be included in your Tiny Health report:  

We do not test for Helminth parasites. Helminths, or parasitic worms typically will not show up in metagenomic sequencing. In order to confidently comment on the presence of a worm parasite we would have to collect a piece of the worm (which is not possible with the collection method we use). We also do not have the entire genomes sequences for parasitic worms in our database.  *It is worth noting that it is very difficult to detect Helminths in mostgut microbiome tests, even if other technology like qPCR is used. 

You may read more about this here. Hope this helps!