One product, one panel, one record.
Visbiome® GI Care High Potency Probiotic Capsules (112.5 Billion CFU, 60 capsules) — label audit
Eight of eight organisms carry a deposit-authority designator — DSM numbers plus internal strain codes, with two reclassifications disclosed. That is not rare on its own: 99 of the 166 labels read here designate every organism they name, and 26 of those name more than eight. What is rare is the pairing of full designation with a 12-page machine-readable insert. And it demonstrates the limit of that achievement: query those eight DSM numbers in PubMed and they return essentially nothing, because the trials were published under a brand name. Full strain disclosure is necessary for accountability and is not the same thing as strain-indexed evidence.
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
- No NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record is on file for this product in this teardown.
- 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 Torn down 2026-07-31, after the founding cohort of 27 was frozen. It sits outside every D27 denominator this site publishes and changes none of them.
- How deep this went
- Full forensic teardown Panel transcribed, every strain designator queried, every certification chased to its issuer’s own register, and the literature behind each marketing claim opened and read.
The Label Verifiability Score for this product
60.0 out of 100
Rank 70 of the 154 products in this audit the rubric can score. This rank is shared with 1 other product — 2 products sit on 60.0 and are tied. They hold the position jointly; no tiebreaker is applied, because every tiebreaker available here would be a number the rubric deliberately refused to weigh, smuggled back in to make a list look tidier.
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 the whole rubric: this record answers all five questions below, so nothing is renormalised away and the divisor is the full 1.00. That share travels with every score on this site and is never dropped — a score over part of the rubric’s 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 | 8 of 8 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 8 / 8 = 1.0000 | 0.2400 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 0 of 8 organism slots have an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 0 / 8 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
| What the CFU count is measured against | 0.22 | Potency basis "through-expiry": CFU figure printed yes, single basis stated yes, basis reaches expiry yes — 3 of 3. | 3 / 3 = 1.0000 | 0.2200 |
| Printed designators that lead to a human trial | 0.20 | 0 of 8 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. | 0 / 8 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
| 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 |
0.6000 — the last column added up — divided by 1.00, the weight this record could answer, is 0.6000. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 60.0 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 | 112.5 billion CFU per capsule — the insert's wording is "at least 112.5 billion (112.5 x 10^9) colony forming units (CFUs)" |
| What that count is measured against | Through expiry |
| Strain designators | All organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 8 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
Product page, verbatim: "Guaranteed Potency Through Best-By Date — If unopened and stored under refrigeration", with "36-46°F Ship & store range · 7 Days Room temp tolerance". Insert, verbatim: "Each capsule contains at least 112.5 billion (112.5 x 10^9) colony forming units (CFUs)." One documentation caveat that travels with this and must not be separated from it: the through-expiry guarantee appears on the web page but NOT in the 12-page insert, whose section 12 storage text says only "VISBIOME is shipped and stored cold to ensure maximum potency (36-46°F / +2 - +8°C). Do not freeze. VISBIOME can be stored at room temperature for up to one week without adversely impacting potency." This is the mirror image of the competing brand's problem, where the guarantee is in the insert and missing from one government record. Neither brand states it in both places.
The panel’s own words on potency, verbatim.
The panel guarantees the count through the expiration or best-by date. This is the only basis that is falsifiable by a reader holding the bottle.
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 acidophilus | DSM 24735 (ExeGi code SD5212) | — not stated separately | No records | "DSM 24735" |
| Lactobacillus plantarum (correct name: Lactiplantibacillus plantarum) | DSM 24730 (ExeGi code SD5209) | — not stated separately | No records | "DSM 24730" |
| Lactobacillus paracasei (correct name: Lacticaseibacillus paracasei) | DSM 24733 (ExeGi code SD5218) | — not stated separately | No records | "DSM 24733" |
| Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus (correct name: Lactobacillus helveticus — the reclassification is stated on the label itself) | DSM 24734 (ExeGi code SD5210) | — not stated separately | No records | "DSM 24734" |
| Streptococcus thermophilus | DSM 24731 (ExeGi code SD5207) | — not stated separately | Animal or in-vitro only | "DSM 24731" |
| Bifidobacterium longum (correct name: Bifidobacterium lactis — the reclassification is stated on the label itself) | DSM 24736 (ExeGi code SD5219) | — not stated separately | No records | "DSM 24736" |
| Bifidobacterium breve | DSM 24732 (ExeGi code SD5206) | — not stated separately | No records | "DSM 24732" |
| Bifidobacterium infantis (correct name: Bifidobacterium lactis — the reclassification is stated on the label itself) | DSM 24737 (ExeGi code SD5220) | — not stated separately | No records | "DSM 24737" |
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.
- Dated capture of the brand’s own page — visbiome-package-product-insert-june-2026https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0736/3645/files/Visbiome_Package_Product_Insert_June2026.pdf — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured The Package/Product Insert, 12 pages, 39,402 extractable characters, in FDA prescribing-information format with numbered sections. This is the document the competing product does not have: everything in it is machine-readable, so a screen reader, a search engine and a pharmacist's parser can all use it. Source for the strain table, the "at least 112.5 billion" wording, the dosing by indication, the two inactive ingredients, the milk declaration, the NICU contraindication, the antibiotic-timing instruction, the FDA MedWatch reporting path, and section 11's evidence tables.
- Dated capture of the brand’s own page — visbiome-gi-care-2026-07-31https://www.visbiome.com/products/visbiome-capsules — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured The live product page, HTTP 200 to a plain automated fetch, plus products.json. Shopify SKU 69355041203, barcode 369355412037, and an NDC-style Product Code 69355-0412-03 on the insert. Source for the price and the conditional discount, the eight designators repeated identically to the insert, the through-Best-By guarantee that the insert omits, the "proving its efficacy" wording, all 23 printed references, and the catalogue enumeration establishing no sex-segmented SKU of either kind.
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, 0 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
$1.17 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $69.95 USD
- What that buys
- 60-capsule bottle at $1.1658 per capsule list — 15 to 60 days at the labeled 1-4 capsules daily
- Price checked
- — the source we read it fromhttps://www.visbiome.com/products/visbiome-capsules — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Clean Label Project Certified® | Confirmed at issuer | 31 July 2026 |
| Low FODMAP Certified by Monash University | Register unreachable | 31 July 2026 |
| Kosher certified | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| "Halal suitable" | Not checked | 31 July 2026 |
| Adverse-event reporting path (ExeGi Pharma and FDA MedWatch) | Not checked | 31 July 2026 |
Clean Label Project Certified®
Found on the certifier’s own public register.
Verified at the issuer's own register, which returns "Visbiome GI Care" dated 2026-05-26 plus eight further Visbiome entries — Advanced GI Care, Extra Strength, GI Care Kids, Unflavored Sachets (Canada) and four Visbiome Vet products. The insert's wording is "Third party certified by the Clean Label Project to ensure Visbiome is free of contaminants, heavy metals, pesticides, and other harmful chemicals." One limit: the individual certificate page returned a Cloudflare 403 through wpewaf.com, so the confirmation rests on the register hit on the certifier's own domain rather than on the certificate itself.
Low FODMAP Certified by Monash University
The certifier’s register could not be queried at all. That is a finding about the verification infrastructure, not about the brand.
monashfodmap.com returned HTTP 404 on every register path tried — /certified-products/, /certified-products, /fodmap-certified-products/ and /product-certification/. Brand-asserted and unverified, never "does not hold it". Worth noting because the competing brand in this batch holds a different low-FODMAP mark, FODMAP Friendly, which was verified: these are separate certifiers with separate registers and the marks are not interchangeable in a comparison table.
Kosher certified
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
The certifier is not named, so there is no register to query.
"Halal suitable"
We have not queried this register for this product. It does not mean the product holds nothing.
Recorded for the wording rather than the mark. Visbiome says "Halal suitable"; the competing brand in this batch says "Halal certified". The weaker word is the more honest one and the credit belongs to whoever chose it.
Adverse-event reporting path (ExeGi Pharma and FDA MedWatch)
We have not queried this register for this product. It does not mean the product holds nothing.
Not a certification, recorded because nothing else in this audit does it. The insert lists both ExeGi Pharma on 1-844-FIT-GUTS and FDA MedWatch on 1-800-FDA-1088 / www.fda.gov/medwatch — pharmacovigilance signposting that no other label read in this audit carries — the MedWatch path was searched for across every teardown and appears on this insert alone.
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 proving-its-efficacy-is-contradicted-by-the-brands-own-printed-p-value
The page says "Our formulation has had numerous clinical studies proving its efficacy in the management of dysbiosis associated with the following conditions" — and then prints, two lines below, an evidence table containing Ng et al. 2010: 28 subjects with mild-to-moderate active ulcerative colitis, 10 of 14 responding on the formulation plus standard therapy against 5 of 14 on placebo plus standard therapy, p=0.064, which is not significant. Printing your own non-significant p-value is genuinely creditable and almost nothing else in this audit does it. "Proving" is the verb that does not survive it. The honest word is "supporting".
The record: visbiome.com/products/visbiome-capsules claim text against the insert's own section 11 evidence table (Ng et al. 2010, n=28, p=0.064), both 2026-07-31 — open ithttps://www.visbiome.com/products/visbiome-capsules — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 2 eight-designators-that-return-nothing-when-you-look-them-up
Every organism here carries both a DSMZ accession and an internal strain code — a doubled identification that is unusual even among the 99 fully-designated labels read here — and querying those numbers in PubMed produces almost nothing. "DSM 24730" returns 0, "DSM 24732" 0, "DSM 24733" 0, "DSM 24734" 0, "DSM 24736" 0, "DSM 24737" 0; "DSM 24735" returns a single false positive matching the unrelated accession LMG 24735; "DSM 24731" returns one in-vitro exopolysaccharide paper. The literature exists — 410 records under the brand name VSL#3, 22 under "De Simone Formulation", 21 under "Visbiome" — but it is indexed under brand names rather than under deposit numbers. This is the more sophisticated version of the audit's core thesis and it should not be flattened: full strain disclosure is necessary for accountability, and it did not by itself make the evidence strain-searchable. Do not read this finding as "Visbiome discloses strains, therefore Visbiome is evidenced", and do not read it as a fault of the disclosure either.
The record: PubMed E-utilities, eight designator queries plus three brand-name queries, all run 2026-07-31 and printed verbatim in the teardown
Finding 3 no-per-organism-cfu-behind-eight-fully-disclosed-designators
Designators disclosed, allocation not. One aggregate figure of 112.5 billion CFU across eight organisms, with no per-organism quantity anywhere on the page or in the 12-page insert. The 112.5 billion could sit overwhelmingly in one of them. This is the one disclosure gap left on the best label in the audit, and it is the same gap the competing eight-species medical food has.
The record: visbiome.com/products/visbiome-capsules panel and the Visbiome Package/Product Insert (June 2026), 12 pages, 39,402 extractable characters, both 2026-07-31 — open ithttps://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0736/3645/files/Visbiome_Package_Product_Insert_June2026.pdf — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 4 the-potency-guarantee-is-on-the-website-and-not-in-the-insert
The product page carries "Guaranteed Potency Through Best-By Date — If unopened and stored under refrigeration". The 12-page insert does not: its section 12 storage text says only that the product is shipped and stored cold, must not be frozen, and tolerates room temperature for up to a week. Report this as an observation about documentation discipline rather than as a potency finding — the guarantee is stated, just not in both documents. It is the exact mirror of the competing brand, whose guarantee is in the insert and missing from one government record. Neither states it in both places.
The record: visbiome.com product page against section 12 of the Visbiome Package/Product Insert, June 2026, both read 2026-07-31
Finding 5 one-hundred-plus-clinical-studies-counts-the-formulation-not-this-capsule-at-this-dose
"100+ Clinical Studies — Visbiome's probiotic blend, the De Simone Formulation, has been the subject of more than 100 clinical studies", alongside "25+ Years of continuous research". The count is of studies on the formulation, not on this capsule SKU at this dose, and the page does not separate the two. Credit where it is due: all 23 references behind the indication claims are printed on the product page, which makes the claim auditable in a way that almost nothing else in this category is.
The record: visbiome.com/products/visbiome-capsules claim text and reference list, 2026-07-31
Finding 6 contains-milk-and-the-competing-product-of-the-same-eight-species-says-it-does-not
Stated plainly by the brand, on the product page and in the insert: "Visbiome contains milk. Visbiome may contain trace amounts of lactose (less than 0.1g per 100g) and dehydrated skim milk or milk protein (casein and beta-lacto globulin of less than 2mg/kg)." Credit for the plainness — and it is a genuine exclusion for a product routinely taken by people with GI disease, some of whom are dairy sensitive. The finding worth publishing is the contradiction: the competing eight-species, 112.5-billion-CFU-per-capsule refrigerated medical food declares the opposite, listing "milk including lactose" among allergens its formulations contain none of. Two products of the same eight species, one declaring milk-free and one declaring it contains milk. Whatever else is true, they are not being manufactured the same way — and this is far more legible to a general reader than the litigation is. A historical note sharpens it: the 2017 VSL Pharmaceuticals label (DSLD 73496) sided with Visbiome, reading "Some dairy ingredients are used in the culture medium... For this reason VSL#3 is not defined as a dairy-free product but as a non-dairy product."
The record: visbiome.com product page and insert against the VSL#3 Product Information Sheet allergen declaration and DSLD 73496, all 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 7 the-only-real-mens-probiotic-evidence-in-this-audit-attaches-to-this-formulation
Query ("De Simone Formulation"[All Fields] OR VSL#3) AND (prostate OR testosterone OR "male hypogonadism") returns four records and three are directly on point. PMID 24969056 (Asian J Androl 2014) — 106 infertile men with bacteriologically cured chronic bacterial prostatitis plus IBS, 95 analysed, 100% male, randomised to rifaximin followed by 450 x 10^9 CFU/day or to no treatment; progression to prostate-vesiculitis 15.5% and 13.6% in treated groups against 45.8% untreated. PMID 29099760 (Nutrients 2017) — 85 men with chronic pelvic pain syndrome due to inflammatory prostatitis plus diarrhoea-predominant IBS; NIH-CPSI fell from 21.2 to 14.5 in subtype IIIa. PMID 39452503 (Diseases 2024) — 124 men with IIIa prostatitis plus IBS-D, randomised, placebo-controlled, rifaximin then the explicitly named De Simone formulation; 68.7% improved NIH-CPSI and 62.5% improved IBS-SSS against 3.3% and 5% on placebo. Everything men's-probiotic marketing actually sells remains at zero: VSL#3 AND (men[Title] OR male[Title] OR mens[Title]) returns three records and all three are animal.
The record: PMID 24969056, PMID 29099760 and PMID 39452503, retrieved 2026-07-31; the men's-title query returning 3 animal records — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 8 a-conditional-discount-displayed-as-the-price
The page displays $62.95, labelled a "10% Recommendation discount", against a $69.95 list. Whether every visitor receives it was not tested, so this page publishes the list price. Alongside it, the page shows "4910 reviews" at 88% five-star with no verification-of-purchase disclosure.
The record: visbiome.com/products/visbiome-capsules pricing block and review widget, 2026-07-31
Finding 9 the-brands-own-competitor-comparison-page-is-a-competitors-account
visbiome.com/pages/visbiome-vs-vsl3 sets out the litigation between the two products. Its core factual claims do check out against the Fourth Circuit's published opinion — the injunction, the Lanham Act verdict, the licence breach — but its table is footnoted "product information that is believed to be accurate and is as of October 2024", roughly 21 months stale at this pass. Never source a competitive claim to it. Source it to the court: De Simone; ExeGi Pharma, LLC v. VSL Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Alfasigma USA, Inc., Nos. 20-1846 and 20-1869, Fourth Circuit, decided 2022-06-07, published, affirmed. Free, public, and unattackable.
The record: visbiome.com/pages/visbiome-vs-vsl3, read 2026-07-31, against the Fourth Circuit opinion No. 20-1846, 29 pages, text extracted — open ithttps://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/201846.P.pdf — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 10 the-dietary-supplement-disclaimer-sits-on-a-medical-food-page
Naming IBS and antibiotic-associated diarrhoea is legal and appropriate for a medical food — the category exists under the Orphan Drug Act for exactly that, and the insert says plainly "VISBIOME is not an FDA-approved drug" and "Visbiome® is a medical food as defined by the Orphan Drug Act". Do not report this product for making illegal disease claims. What is incoherent is the footer, which carries the dietary-supplement disclaimer — "not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease" — underneath a page describing the dietary management of a named condition. The same incoherence appears on the competing brand's pages.
The record: visbiome.com/products/visbiome-capsules footer against the insert's own regulatory statements, 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.
- Low FODMAP Certified by Monash University status
- monashfodmap.com returned HTTP 404 on every register path tried — /certified-products/, /certified-products, /fodmap-certified-products/ and /product-certification/. Brand-asserted and unverified, never "does not hold it". Worth noting because the competing brand in this batch holds a different low-FODMAP mark, FODMAP Friendly, which was verified: these are separate certifiers with separate registers and the marks are not interchangeable in a comparison table.
- Kosher certified status
- The certifier is not named, so there is no register to query.
- "Halal suitable" status
- Recorded for the wording rather than the mark. Visbiome says "Halal suitable"; the competing brand in this batch says "Halal certified". The weaker word is the more honest one and the credit belongs to whoever chose it.
- Adverse-event reporting path (ExeGi Pharma and FDA MedWatch) status
- Not a certification, recorded because nothing else in this audit does it. The insert lists both ExeGi Pharma on 1-844-FIT-GUTS and FDA MedWatch on 1-800-FDA-1088 / www.fda.gov/medwatch — pharmacovigilance signposting that no other label read in this audit carries — the MedWatch path was searched for across every teardown and appears on this insert alone.
- Any formulation-level efficacy conclusion for the De Simone Formulation
- This is the single most important limit on this page. The insert's section 11 is titled "CLINICAL DATA - EXCLUSIVE TO THE DE SIMONE FORMULATION" and tabulates roughly 23 trials by indication with subject counts and designs. What was verified here is the structure and content of those tables and the PubMed counts around them — "De Simone Formulation" returns 22 records, "VSL#3" returns 410, "Visbiome" returns 21, with indication-level counts of 28 for pouchitis, 11 for ulcerative colitis, 7 for irritable bowel and 6 for hepatic encephalopathy. The ~23 cited trials were not independently pulled and read. Two were read at abstract-table level and are quoted in the findings below. No summary efficacy conclusion for this formulation is published on this page, because this record does not support one.
- The Monash Low FODMAP certification
- monashfodmap.com returned 404 on all four register paths tried, so the claim could not be checked at the issuer. Brand-asserted and unverified, not absent.
- The Clean Label Project certificate itself
- The individual certificate page returned a Cloudflare 403 through wpewaf.com. The register search on the certifier's own domain did resolve and returns this product by name with a date, so the certification is confirmed at the issuer — but the underlying certificate document was not read.
- The kosher certification
- The certifier is not named anywhere, so there is nothing to look up.
- A government label record
- There is none, and its absence is not a defect. DSLD is the Dietary Supplement Label Database and this is a medical food, not a dietary supplement. Four query variants were run to establish it — "Visbiome" returns 0, "ExeGi" returns 0, and "Vis Biome" and "Visbiome GI Care" each return 30 unrelated records from other companies. Note also that DSLD's UPC search does not function: querying the API for 860009487314, 860009487321, 369355412037 and 693550412037 returns 0 hits each, including UPCs DSLD itself holds. UPC absence in that database is not evidence of anything.
- Whether the displayed price is available to every visitor
- The page shows $62.95 against a $69.95 list, labelled a "10% Recommendation discount". Whether the discount applies universally was not tested, so the list price is the one published here.
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.
Of everything this audit has opened, this is the best label — and it is also the clearest demonstration that a good label is not the same thing as good evidence.
Eight of eight organisms carry a deposit-authority designator. DSM 24730 through DSM 24737, each paired with an internal strain code, each printed identically on the product page and in the insert. Two reclassifications are stated on the label itself rather than left to the reader. Ninety-nine of the 166 labels read here carry a deposit-authority designator for every organism they name, and this is not the only one of those to name more than four organisms — 40 of the 99 do.
The insert is the other half of it. Twelve pages, 39,402 extractable characters, in FDA prescribing-information format with numbered sections. Its competitor — same eight species, same 112.5 billion CFU per capsule, same refrigerated medical-food category, near-identical unit price — publishes a one-page image with zero extractable characters. Two products on the same shelf; one is readable by a screen reader and one is not.
Now the limit, and it is the most interesting finding in this batch. Query those eight DSM numbers in PubMed:
"DSM 24730" → 0 · "DSM 24732" → 0 · "DSM 24733" → 0 · "DSM 24734" → 0 ·
"DSM 24736" → 0 · "DSM 24737" → 0
One of the remaining two returns a false positive matching an unrelated accession; the other returns a single in-vitro paper. Meanwhile the literature is enormous — 410 records under the brand name VSL#3, 22 under De Simone Formulation, 21 under Visbiome. The trials exist. They are simply indexed under brand names rather than deposit numbers. Full strain disclosure is necessary for accountability and did not, by itself, make the evidence strain-searchable. Do not collapse that into “Visbiome discloses strains, therefore Visbiome is evidenced” — and do not read it as a fault of the disclosure either.
What the brand does with that evidence is mostly careful and once careless. Careful: all 23 references are printed on the page; a non-significant p-value (Ng 2010, p=0.064) sits in the brand’s own evidence table; the milk content is declared plainly; the NICU contraindication, the bloating warning and the four-hour antibiotic spacing are given prominence unprompted; the halal claim is written as “halal suitable” rather than certified; the Clean Label Project certification was confirmed at the certifier’s own register; and there is an FDA MedWatch reporting path, which nothing else in this audit provides. Careless: one verb. “Numerous clinical studies proving its efficacy” — printed two lines above the table containing p=0.064.
One thing is deliberately not on this page: a conclusion about whether the formulation works. The insert’s evidence tables were verified for structure and content and the PubMed counts around them were run, but the roughly 23 cited trials were not independently pulled and read. That gap is published rather than papered over.
And one thing is not on the brand’s page that could have been. The closest thing to a real men’s probiotic indication anywhere in this audit attaches to this formulation — chronic inflammatory prostatitis with co-occurring IBS, including a 124-man randomised placebo-controlled trial. It comes with four caveats that can never be detached from it: it is always combined with an antibiotic, it comes from one research group in Catania, it has never been replicated independently, and it is a disease population rather than a consumer one. Visbiome mentions none of it — not prostatitis, not men, not CP/CPPS, anywhere on the page or in twelve pages of insert. In a category defined by overclaiming, a brand under-claiming relative to its own evidence is worth saying out loud.