One product, one panel, one record.
Microbiome Labs MegaSporeBiotic — label audit
The dosing instructions tell a consumer that abdominal cramping and loose stools "are a sign that the product is working!" — an unfalsifiable framing in which improvement proves efficacy and adverse effects prove it too, and which discourages the one rational response to new GI symptoms.
This page is an audit of a label. It records what this product’s panel discloses, what of that could be checked against a primary record, and what could not. The score below ranks this product on that disclosure and on nothing else.
The record this page rests on
- NIH label record
- Label read on
- The most recent dated artefact behind this page. Labels change; this is how old our reading of it is.
- Cohort
- Addendum — outside the founding denominators Audited 2026-07-31, outside the frozen founding cohort of 27 and outside every D27 denominator.
- How deep this went
- Label audit — the lighter pass What the label says, what basis it gives for its CFU number, whether the strains are coded, whether a government label record exists — checked and published. No full claim inventory was written for this SKU. It is a real result, and it is a shallower one than the teardowns above it, which is why the page says so before you weigh it against them.
The Label Verifiability Score for this product
40.2 out of 100
Rank 104 of the 154 products in this audit the rubric can score.
The score measures one thing: how much of what you are buying this company tells you, and how much of that survives being checked against a source that is not the company. It does not measure whether the product works — this site holds no efficacy data of its own, and 0 of 294 organism slots in the founding cohort carry a strain with a human randomised trial for any male-specific outcome, so nobody in this category has evidence that would support a ranking by effect.
Computed over 86% of the rubric by weight — the share of the five questions below this record could answer. The remaining question is unanswered, and unanswered is not nought: it leaves the divisor rather than dragging the score down. That share travels with the number and is never dropped — this score over 86% of the weight and the same score over all of it are different claims.
| Component | Weight | What was counted, and where | Fraction | Weight × fraction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strain identity printed on the panel | 0.24 | 4 of 5 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 4 / 5 = 0.8000 | 0.1920 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 0 of 5 organism slots have an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 0 / 5 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
| What the CFU count is measured against | 0.22 | Potency basis "none-stated": CFU figure printed yes, single basis stated no, basis reaches expiry no — 1 of 3. | 1 / 3 = 0.3333 | 0.073333 |
| Printed designators that lead to a human trial | 0.20 | 2 of 5 checked organism slots resolve to at least one human randomised trial under the designator exactly as printed. This counts whether the identity leads to a trial, never what the trial found. | 2 / 5 = 0.4000 | 0.0800 |
| Certification confirmed at the issuer’s own register | 0.14 | Every certification on this record is brand-asserted with the register unreachable, or not yet queried. An unreachable register is a fact about the verification infrastructure, not about this brand, so it may not move its position. | Not answered | — excluded from the divisor, not counted as nought |
0.345333 — the last column added up — divided by 0.86, the weight this record could answer, is 0.4016. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 40.2 above.
See this product’s row in the full ranking, alongside the other 153 scored products, or read what each of the five components asks and how to check it .
What this label discloses
Everything in this table is what the product itself states — on the printed panel, on the brand’s own page, or in the label record the manufacturer filed. Nothing in it is checked yet; checking is the next section.
| Disclosure | As recorded |
|---|---|
| CFU as printed | Proprietary Probiotic Blend — 4 Billion Spore Cells |
| What that count is measured against | No basis stated |
| Strain designators | Some organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 5 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
The label states "Proprietary Probiotic Blend — 4 Billion Spore Cells" with no temporal basis — not at manufacture, not at expiry. Note the unit: "Spore Cells", not CFU. Every other product in this batch, and all 27 in the founding cohort, declares CFU. "Spore cells" is not a standard potency unit and is not directly comparable to a CFU count, which defeats cross-product arithmetic. The product page states no potency figure at all.
The panel’s own words on potency, verbatim.
A CFU number appears with no temporal basis of any kind. A count with no basis is not a quantity; there is no date at which it is claimed to be true.
Some organisms carry a printed strain designator and some are named by species only.
| Organism as printed | Designator as printed | Quantity as printed | What the designator resolves to | The query we ran |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bacillus indicus | HU36 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | PubMed E-utilities, exact designator with randomized controlled trial[pt] |
| Bacillus subtilis | HU58 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | PubMed E-utilities, exact designator with randomized controlled trial[pt] |
| Bacillus coagulans | SC-208 | — not stated separately | Human records, no RCT | PubMed E-utilities, exact designator with randomized controlled trial[pt] |
| Bacillus clausii | SC-109 | — not stated separately | Human records, no RCT | PubMed E-utilities, exact designator with randomized controlled trial[pt] |
| Bacillus licheniformis | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
What of that is verifiable
A disclosure is verifiable when a reader can open a record that neither we nor the brand controls and see the same thing. Below is every dated artefact this page rests on. What is absent from this list is not verified, however reasonable it sounds.
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 275965 (opens in a new tab) captured On-market. Stored under the name "Mega Sporebiotic", UPC 6 74306 52323 7, 60 ct. Found only via the two-word spelling "Mega Spore"; "MegaSporeBiotic" and "MegaSpore" both return zero. This record is the source of the potency line ("Proprietary Probiotic Blend — 4 Billion Spore Cells"), the two strain designators absent from the product page, the "pharmaceutical-grade" and "Professional use only" statements, and the self-declared free-from list (dairy, wheat, corn, rice, salt, sugar, soy, artificial colors or flavors).
- Dated capture of the brand’s own page — microbiomelabs-megasporebiotic-2026-07-31https://microbiomelabs.com/home/products/megasporebiotic/ — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured HTTP 200. The page does not surface a Supplement Facts panel or any potency figure; the strain list was recovered from a JS accordion embedded in the page HTML, which names five species but only two designators. Source for the dosing protocol quoted in the findings, the TrustScore badge, the studies table and the price gate.
How many of its strains have a human trial for what it is sold for
Across the frozen founding cohort, 0 of 294 organism slots (0.0%) carry an organism with a human randomised controlled trial for any male-specific outcome. Not for this product — for all 27 of the founding teardowns, taken together. That is the number to hold against any men’s probiotic, including this one.
Two further founding-cohort figures for context: only 43 of 294 organism slots carry a strain with any human RCT at all under the exact code printed on the label, and only 2 of 27 products have a published human trial of the finished formula — the thing actually in the bottle. All three figures divide by the frozen cohort of 27 teardowns and 294 organism slots, never by every teardown on this site.
For this product specifically, 2 organism slots carry a strain with a human RCT under the exact designator printed on the label.
A word on what a designator has to clear before it counts here. The organism must be named with the exact strain code that appears in the trial, the trial must be in humans, and the code must return that trial when a reader searches it. A species name does not qualify: the trials in this field are of strains, and a species contains thousands of them.
What it costs per day
What certification it holds, checked at the issuer’s own register
A badge on a bottle is a claim like any other. Every row below was checked — or not checked — at the certifier’s own public register, never at the badge. Across the frozen founding cohort, 2 of 27 products hold a certification we could confirm at the issuer — a founding-cohort figure, not a count over every teardown on this site.
| Programme | Status at the issuer | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| TrustScore by SuppCo | Not checked | 31 July 2026 |
TrustScore by SuppCo
We have not queried this register for this product. It does not mean the product holds nothing.
Displayed prominently on the product page as "TrustScore Verified by SuppCo" and described on-page as "SuppCo's proprietary rating system [that] scores products on a 10-point scale based on their ability to deliver against 29 key quality attributes". SuppCo is a commercial supplement-rating company. A TrustScore is a proprietary editorial score — not a laboratory test, not a certification, and not verification of contents. There is no issuer register to check because there is nothing of the certification kind being asserted. Recorded here because the word "Verified" next to a badge invites exactly the misreading it gets.
How it differs from the same brand’s women’s version
Across the fourteen same-brand men’s-versus-women’s label diffs run inside the frozen founding cohort, zero men’s or default formulas contain a probiotic strain, identified by designator, that was selected on male-specific evidence. In eight of the fourteen the sex-specific differentiator is a botanical or a mineral, and in five of the fourteen the women’s SKU is better-specified, cheaper, or both — “better-specified” meaning the panel that discloses more, never the panel with more in it. The rule behind each of those counts, and all fourteen pairs classified against it , are published in full. Diffs run on teardowns added since sit outside this fourteen, and outside the sentence above.
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 side-effects-framed-as-evidence-the-product-is-working
Product page, verbatim: "Start with 1/2 capsule or 1 full capsule with food and slowly increase to 2 capsules per day... If 1 capsule every other day causes side effects, try starting with 1/2 capsules or even 1/4 capsule in some cases. Possible side effects may include abdominal cramping, loose stools, and changes in bowel movements. Though these side effects may be uncomfortable, they are a sign that the product is working! Side effects should resolve within 2-3 days." This tells a consumer that an adverse gastrointestinal reaction is evidence of efficacy. Improvement confirms the product works and adverse effects also confirm it works, which is unfalsifiable, and it discourages the one rational response to new GI symptoms, which is to stop and reassess.
The record: microbiomelabs.com product page, verbatim, fetched 2026-07-31 — open ithttps://microbiomelabs.com/home/products/megasporebiotic/ — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 2 no-cfu-count-on-the-product-page-and-the-only-cfu-figure-shown-is-a-mouse-dose
The product page states no potency figure anywhere. The only CFU number on the entire page appears inside a study-table row describing a mouse experiment — "300 million CFU of MegaSporeBiotic™ supplementation supported immune function and iron levels in mice." A reader could easily take 300 million as the product's dose. It is not; the label says 4 billion spore cells.
The record: microbiomelabs.com product page, full-page scan for potency figures, 2026-07-31
Finding 3 trustscore-verified-by-suppco-is-a-commercial-score-not-a-verification
A prominently displayed badge reads "TrustScore Verified by SuppCo". SuppCo is a commercial supplement-rating company and a TrustScore is its proprietary 10-point editorial score. It is not a laboratory test, not a certification, and not verification that the contents match the label.
The record: microbiomelabs.com product page badge and its own on-page description, 2026-07-31
Finding 4 pharmaceutical-grade-and-the-first-are-undefined-and-uncited
The label reads "The first all-spore, pharmaceutical-grade probiotic antioxidant formula." "Pharmaceutical grade" has no legal or regulatory definition for dietary supplements in the US, and "the first" is a bare superiority claim with no cited basis.
The record: DSLD 275965 label transcription, 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 5 the-product-page-hides-two-designators-its-own-label-carries
The label carries four of five strain designators — HU36, HU58, SC-208, SC-109. The product page surfaces only two, giving species only for B. coagulans and B. clausii. The brand's marketing page is less informative than its own Supplement Facts panel, which is the reverse of the usual failure mode and means a shopper reading the product page cannot look up two of the five organisms.
The record: microbiomelabs.com product page accordion versus DSLD 275965, both 2026-07-31
Finding 6 b-licheniformis-has-no-designator-anywhere
One of the five organisms is species-only on both the page and the label, so it cannot be looked up at all.
The record: microbiomelabs.com product page and DSLD 275965, both 2026-07-31
Finding 7 potency-stated-in-spore-cells-not-cfu
"4 Billion Spore Cells" is not a standard potency unit and is not directly comparable to a CFU count. Cross-product arithmetic against any CFU figure on this site is not valid for this product.
The record: DSLD 275965 Supplement Facts transcription, 2026-07-31
Finding 8 cfu-basis-unstated-and-no-per-strain-allocation
No temporal basis for the potency figure, and no allocation of the 4 billion across five organisms.
The record: DSLD 275965 label statements, 2026-07-31
Finding 9 evidence-tiers-unlabelled-in-the-studies-table
The "Total Gut Restoration Studies" table mixes evidence tiers without labelling them, and the tiers are visible in the brand's own descriptions — in-vitro M-SHIME® fecal-simulator work (DOI 10.2217/fmb-2022-0066, DOI 10.1016/j.ijpx.2019.100021, DOI 10.1016/j.foodres.2021.110676), an animal study explicitly "in mice" (DOI 10.1002/jpen.1851), and human trials (PMID 33041703, DOI 10.3390/nu11091968, DOI 10.4291/wjgp.v8.i3.117). Several entries list no duration and no design at all. A mouse study and a fecal-simulator study sit in the same visual register as human trials.
The record: microbiomelabs.com "Total Gut Restoration Studies" table as printed, 2026-07-31
Finding 10 professional-use-only-on-a-label-sold-on-amazon-and-walmart
The label carries "Professional use only", yet the product surfaces on Amazon and Walmart listings. Contrast the practitioner-channel competitor whose label reads "Not for sale through Amazon.com". The positioning is not matched by distribution control.
The record: DSLD 275965 label statement versus Amazon and Walmart listings surfaced in search, 2026-07-31
Finding 11 no-third-party-certification-and-gmp-is-self-asserted
No third-party certification is claimed or held. The label says "This formula meets or exceeds cGMP quality standards" — a self-assertion with no certifying body named — plus unbranded "GMO free" and "GF Gluten free" text, which are not the Non-GMO Project or GFCO marks.
The record: DSLD 275965 label transcription, 2026-07-31
Finding 12 social-proof-on-the-page-is-eight-years-old
The reviews shown on the product page are three reviews dated 2017-2018, the most recent from April 2018, presented as current social proof.
The record: microbiomelabs.com product page reviews block, 2026-07-31
What we could not verify
Every gap below is published rather than deleted. Most are derived automatically from the empty fields in this page’s own record, so a gap cannot be hidden by leaving a box blank.
- TrustScore by SuppCo status
- Displayed prominently on the product page as "TrustScore Verified by SuppCo" and described on-page as "SuppCo's proprietary rating system [that] scores products on a 10-point scale based on their ability to deliver against 29 key quality attributes". SuppCo is a commercial supplement-rating company. A TrustScore is a proprietary editorial score — not a laboratory test, not a certification, and not verification of contents. There is no issuer register to check because there is nothing of the certification kind being asserted. Recorded here because the word "Verified" next to a badge invites exactly the misreading it gets.
- A US retail price, and therefore the cost per day
- Microbiome Labs does not publish a price. The product page states "A valid Practitioner account is required for direct purchases from our website", so no brand MSRP is retrievable. The only figure found is a third-party reseller price — National Discount Vitamins at $63.99 for 60 capsules — which at the label's two-capsule serving is 30 servings and works out to $2.13 per day on a reseller basis. A reseller price is not a brand MSRP and is not published here as this product's price, and no cost per day is derived from it. Note also that the brand's own dose-escalation protocol means the label's two-capsule serving is not the starting dose, so the stated 30 servings per container understates bottle life in the early weeks and any per-day figure is lower at first.
- A men’s-versus-women’s label diff
- The same brand’s women’s SKU has not been compared against this panel.
- A brand MSRP, and therefore an authoritative cost per day
- Microbiome Labs requires a valid practitioner account for direct purchase. See the price note.
- How the 4 billion spore cells are split across the five organisms
- Not disclosed. Five organisms behind one proprietary-blend figure, with no allocation printed.
- What the brand's "Total Gut Restoration Studies" table actually shows
- The product page publishes a table of roughly ten studies with resolvable DOIs and PMIDs. The identifiers were confirmed to be present on the page as printed. None of the studies was retrieved or read. Their results must not be characterised beyond the brand's own wording, and the brand's own characterisations must not be repeated as fact.
- Any designator for Bacillus licheniformis
- None is printed on the product page or on the label, so this organism cannot be looked up in any literature at all.
- Whether "Spore Cells" is comparable to a CFU count
- It is not a standard potency unit and the label does not define it. No conversion is attempted here, and this product's 4 billion is not arithmetically comparable to any other product's CFU figure on this site.
How to check every line of this page yourself
Nothing on this page requires trusting us. Every claim above resolves to a record you can open:
- Open the NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record linked at the top of this page. It is the label the manufacturer filed, not our transcription of it.
- Compare the CFU line and the suggested-use line against the disclosure table above. If they disagree with us, we are wrong and we want to know.
- Take any strain designator from the panel and run the query printed beside it. The query is published precisely so you can get a different answer than we did.
- Divide the price by the number of days the label’s own dose instructions make the container last. That arithmetic is the whole of the cost-per-day row.
- Search the certifier’s own register for this product, not for the brand. A company can participate in a programme without this product being on its list.
The single most consumer-relevant sentence on this product’s page is in its dosing instructions:
“Possible side effects may include abdominal cramping, loose stools, and changes in bowel movements. Though these side effects may be uncomfortable, they are a sign that the product is working!”
That is unfalsifiable. If you feel better, the product works. If you feel worse, the product also works. And the practical effect of the framing is to discourage the one rational response to new gastrointestinal symptoms, which is to stop and reassess. This is a defect in the reasoning of the copy, not evidence that anyone was harmed, and it is not published here as a safety alarm.
The disclosure runs in an unusual direction. Most brands print more on the marketing page than the panel supports. This one prints less: the product page names five organisms and only two designators, while the federal label record carries four — SC-208 and SC-109 are on the label and not on the page. A shopper reading the product page cannot look up two of the five strains that the brand has already disclosed to a government database. The fifth, Bacillus licheniformis, carries no designator on either surface and cannot be looked up at all.
Potency is stranger still. The product page states no potency figure anywhere. The only CFU number printed on it sits inside a study-table row about mice — “300 million CFU … in mice” — which a reader could easily mistake for the dose. The actual figure is on the label, and it is not in CFU: “4 Billion Spore Cells.” That is not a standard unit, the label does not define it, and no arithmetic on this site converts it into a CFU count. There is no temporal basis for it either.
Two marks deserve naming. “TrustScore Verified by SuppCo” is a commercial rating company’s proprietary 10-point editorial score, described as such on the brand’s own page — not a lab test, not a certification, not verification of contents. And “the first all-spore, pharmaceutical-grade probiotic antioxidant formula” uses a term with no legal definition for US dietary supplements, attached to an uncited claim of being first.
Credit where it is owed: the brand publishes a studies table with resolvable DOIs and PMIDs, which is more citation transparency than most of this category offers, and it includes entries it describes as in vitro and in mice. None of those studies was read here. And on the question this site exists to answer — Microbiome Labs makes no gender claim about this product at all. The words “for Women & Men” appear only in the Amazon listing title. That is the men’s-probiotic category being manufactured at the listing layer rather than the formulation layer.