Will tomorrow’s best nutritionists be artificial intelligence systems? 

Viome recently launched the first at-home test kits designed to offer consumers new insights into their cellular health, mitochondrial health, immune system health, gut health, stress response, and biological age, by assessing certain biomarkers picked up by a finger prick. This is the only at-home service of its kind to measure how human, mitochondrial, and microbial genes are expressed in one’s body, which Viome then uses as actionable health markers to make personalized nutrition recommendations based on AI.
 
“We finally have the technology available to be able to digitize the human body at a molecular level and analyze system-level biochemical activities,” Naveen Jain, CEO of Viome, said. “This deep understanding allows us to recommend to each individual as to why they should eat certain foods, and why they should avoid certain foods based on their own individual biology, with the goal to prevent and reverse chronic disease. This is bringing us one step closer to our mission to make chronic diseases a matter of choice and not a matter of bad luck.”
 
The service, called Health Intelligence, provides scores on six main health categories from which precise nutritional recommendations are made.
 
Gut microbiome gene expressions are evaluated due to their roles in weight management, stress, energy, sleep, and immune function. Viome combines over 20 pathways measured in the Gut Intelligence test including inflammatory activity, digestive efficiency, metabolic fitness, gut lining health, and active microbial diversity.
 
Expressions related to cellular health are addressed for antioxidant activity and other improved pathway activities related to immunity, energy, anti-aging, and anti-inflammatory funcitons.
 
Mitochondrial health markers are addressed based on parameters aligned with the energy and repair of cells associated with aging, metabolism, cardiovascular, and brain health.
 
Biomarkers related to the immune system are also assessed, based on levels of inflammatory activity and cellular stress as determined by a blood sample.
 
Viome also addresses biological age through an artificial intelligence system that incorporates data from over 100,000 people to match molecular patterns from people of different ages, and compares an individual’s biological age with their actual age.
 
The sixth category Viome addresses is stress response, which measures RNA expressions associated with resilience and stress from environmental factors, mood, lifestyle, or toxins produced by the gut microbiome. A high score can mean a high presence of oxidative stress, or an adverse environment within the gut or the whole body.
 
While DNA tests may help uncover the propensity by which humans develop certain chronic health issues or diseases, RNA expressions may help pinpoint biomarkers associated with obesity, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, depression, anxiety, and more.
 
“Our Health Intelligence Service analyzes information on the expression of tens of thousands of human genes, microbial genes, and mitochondrial genes to produce dynamic and actionable health insights. Gene expressions are actionable because they can be modulated by our diet, lifestyle, and environment. Viome Health Intelligence is the only at-home test to measure RNA in both human cells and the gut microbiome to make nutrition recommendations and improve individual health.”
 
The test uses a breakthrough capillary blood transcriptome test, which requires a finger prick and a sample size of only 50 microliters of blood.