One product, one panel, one record.
Pure Encapsulations Probiotic 50B, 60 capsules (SKU PR56) — label audit
The mirror image of the category's usual failure. Most brands hide the strain and publish the total; Pure Encapsulations publishes all five strain designators and hides the split — the panel reads "Probiotic Blend, 50 billion CFU, providing" and then lists five organisms with no quantity of any kind beside them. And nowhere on the label does it say when the 50 billion is true.
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, after the founding cohort of 27 was frozen. It sits outside every D27 denominator this site publishes.
- 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
56.7 out of 100
Rank 81 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 80% 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 80% 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 | 5 of 5 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 5 / 5 = 1.0000 | 0.2400 |
| 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 | No designator on this panel has been searched yet. | Not answered | — excluded from the divisor, not counted as nought |
| Certification confirmed at the issuer’s own register | 0.14 | 1 claimed certification found on the issuer’s own public register. Read the scope before reading the mark: most certify one narrow property. | 1 / 1 = 1.0000 | 0.1400 |
0.453333 — the last column added up — divided by 0.80, the weight this record could answer, is 0.5667. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 56.7 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 | Probiotic Blend — 50 billion CFU, providing |
| What that count is measured against | No basis stated |
| Strain designators | All organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 5 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
There is nothing to quote, and the absence was established rather than assumed: every one of the sixteen transcribed label statements plus all ingredient notes were read, and no "at expiry" and no "at manufacture" language appears anywhere on this label. What the label does carry is two storage statements — "Keep refrigerated" and "This formula requires refrigeration to maintain culture viability" — which is an implicit admission that potency is storage-dependent, with no guarantee attached to either end of shelf life.
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.
Every organism on the panel carries a printed strain designator. Whether those designators lead anywhere is a separate question, answered below.
| Organism as printed | Designator as printed | Quantity as printed | What the designator resolves to | The query we ran |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lactobacillus plantarum | LP-115 | — not stated separately | Not yet checked | Species-anchored, human-tagged PubMed record count |
| Lactobacillus acidophilus | LA-14 | — not stated separately | Not yet checked | Species-anchored, human-tagged PubMed record count |
| Lactobacillus rhamnosus | LR-32 | — not stated separately | Not yet checked | Species-anchored, human-tagged PubMed record count |
| Bifidobacterium animalis lactis (correct name: Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis) | BL-04 | — not stated separately | Not yet checked | Species-anchored, human-tagged PubMed record count |
| Bifidobacterium longum | BL-5 | — not stated separately | Not yet checked | Species-anchored, human-tagged PubMed record count, run as BL-5 and Bl-05 |
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 294040 (opens in a new tab) captured On-market, entered 2023-07-18, with a label scan on file. The spine of this page: the source for the panel structure, the five designators, the absence of any per-strain quantity, all sixteen label statements and every ingredient note, the two storage statements, and the GFCO seal wording. Its UPC, 7 66298 01377 0, is the hard match that made the GFCO register lookup possible.
- Internet Archive capture — 20260517154209 (opens in a new tab) captured Used for price and SKU only, because the live practitioner storefront returns HTTP 403 to automated requests. The snapshot's embedded offer block carries $88.20, SKU PR56 and the product name "Probiotic 50B 60's"; the page's own last-modified date is 2025-10-31. Recorded with its capture date rather than presented as a live price.
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.
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
$1.47 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $88.20 USD
- What that buys
- 60-capsule bottle (60 servings, 1 capsule daily), SKU PR56, listed as "Probiotic 50B 60's"
- Price checked
- — the source we read it from (opens in a new tab)
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 |
|---|---|---|
| GFCO (Gluten-Free Certification Organization) | Confirmed at issuer | 31 July 2026 |
| Any contents certification (NSF/ANSI 173, USP Verified) | Not checked | 31 July 2026 |
GFCO (Gluten-Free Certification Organization)
Found on the certifier’s own public register.
Verified at the issuer's own register. The label seal reads "GFCO.org (Gluten-Free Certification Organization)" and "Certified gluten free by the Gluten-Free Certification Organization, www.gluten.org". Searching the GFCO Product Finder by UPC 766298013770 returns "PROBIOTIC 50B" and "PROBIOTIC 50B 60'S", brand Pure Encapsulations, UPC 766298013770 — and that UPC matches DSLD's 7 66298 01377 0 exactly. Certification confirmed. Scope trap worth stating: GFCO certifies the absence of gluten. It says nothing about CFU count, strain identity, potency at expiry or contaminants.
Any contents certification (NSF/ANSI 173, USP Verified)
We have not queried this register for this product. It does not mean the product holds nothing.
None claimed on this product, so nothing was refuted. There is no NSF mark and no USP verification here — the one certification this label carries speaks to an allergen, not to what is in the capsule.
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.
This brand sells no women’s counterpart to this product, so there is no diff to run.
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 full-strain-identity-with-no-dose-behind-any-of-it
Five strains, five designators, and not one quantity. The panel reads "Probiotic Blend — 50 billion CFU, providing" and then lists LP-115, LA-14, LR-32, BL-04 and BL-5 with nothing beside them. This is the mirror image of the category's usual failure, and it lands in the same place: no strain in this product can be matched to the dose used in any trial.
The record: DSLD 294040 panel structure, verbatim, 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 2 no-cfu-basis-stated-at-all
Neither expiry nor manufacture, across sixteen label statements and every ingredient note. The 50 billion has no moment attached to it.
The record: DSLD 294040, all sixteen label statements and ingredient notes read, 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 3 requires-refrigeration-with-no-potency-guarantee-tied-to-the-cold-chain
The label says "Keep refrigerated" and "This formula requires refrigeration to maintain culture viability" — an explicit admission that potency is storage-dependent — and then declines to guarantee potency at any point in shelf life.
The record: DSLD 294040 storage statements, verbatim, 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 4 one-of-five-strains-has-essentially-no-human-literature
BL-5 returns a single human-tagged record. Because the per-strain split is undisclosed, there is no way to know whether it is 1% of the bottle or 40% of it.
The record: Species-anchored human-tagged PubMed record counts, 2026-07-31: LA-14 18, BL-04 27, LR-32 10, LP-115 7, BL-5 1 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 5 highest-sticker-price-in-its-batch-behind-a-login
$88.20 for a five-strain formula, $1.47 a day — and the buyer cannot see that price at all without a practitioner sign-in. The figure published here had to be recovered from an archive snapshot because the live storefront returns 403.
The record: Internet Archive capture 20260517154209 of the Pure Encapsulations pro storefront offer block, 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
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.
- 5 strain designators not looked up
- These designators are printed on the panel and have not been searched. They are unchecked, not empty.
- Any contents certification (NSF/ANSI 173, USP Verified) status
- None claimed on this product, so nothing was refuted. There is no NSF mark and no USP verification here — the one certification this label carries speaks to an allergen, not to what is in the capsule.
- The per-strain CFU split
- Withheld. The panel is literally "Probiotic Blend — 50 billion CFU, providing" with five nested rows carrying no quantity of any kind. Identity is fully disclosed and dose is not, so any one of the five could be a token inclusion — including BL-5, the one with essentially no human literature behind it.
- Any CFU basis
- Absent from all sixteen transcribed label statements and from every ingredient note. Neither expiry nor manufacture. The label requires refrigeration and guarantees nothing at either end of shelf life.
- The live price
- pureencapsulationspro.com returns HTTP 403 to automated requests. The price published here is from the Internet Archive snapshot of 2026-05-17, whose embedded offer block carries $88.20 and SKU PR56, on a page whose own last-modified date is 2025-10-31. This is the practitioner-channel price: Pure Encapsulations gates its professional storefront behind a practitioner sign-in wall, so a retail buyer cannot see it at all.
- Adjudicated randomised-trial status for any of the five designators
- The PubMed figures recorded here are record counts, not adjudicated trials — no abstract was read to confirm that the designator was the intervention rather than a passing mention. They are used only to separate "has a real human literature" from "has none", which is the distinction that matters on this label, and no per-strain RCT count is published.
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.
This label does the opposite of what the category usually does, and ends up in a similar place.
Most probiotic panels publish a big total and hide the roster. This one publishes the roster and hides the split. All five organisms carry a designator — LP-115, LA-14, LR-32, BL-04, BL-5 — and the panel structure is literally “Probiotic Blend — 50 billion CFU, providing” followed by five rows with no quantity of any kind beside any of them.
Identity, fully disclosed. Dose, not at all. Any one of the five could be a token inclusion, and the one to worry about is BL-5, which returns a single human-tagged PubMed record against 27 for BL-04 and 18 for LA-14. It could be a fortieth of the bottle or half of it; the label does not say.
And there is no CFU basis anywhere. That absence was established rather than assumed — sixteen label statements and every ingredient note were read. No at-expiry, no at-manufacture. What the label does carry is “This formula requires refrigeration to maintain culture viability”, which is an explicit admission that potency decays with storage, followed by no guarantee at either end of shelf life.
One thing here is genuinely verified, and it is worth separating from the seals that are not. GFCO certification checks out at the issuer’s own register — a UPC search of the GFCO Product Finder returns this product by name, and that UPC matches the government label record exactly. That is a real result, and its scope is narrow: GFCO certifies the absence of gluten. It says nothing about CFU count, strain identity, potency at expiry, or contaminants. There is no contents certification on this product at all.
Last, the price. $88.20, the highest in its batch, $1.47 a day — and a retail buyer cannot see it. The professional storefront gates pricing behind a practitioner sign-in and returns 403 to anything automated, so even the figure published here had to be recovered from an archive snapshot.