One product, one panel, one record.
XYMOGEN Probio Defense, 84 capsules (SKU 000000000300000926) — label audit
This label prints a full strain designator for every organism it contains — Rosell-52, Rosell-11, Rosell-175, with a deposited-culture claim at the Institut Pasteur — and the strains carry 16, 8 and 8 reproducible strain-matched human RCTs. Full designator coverage is not rare on this site; three designators that each return a reproducible strain-matched trial count is. It is also the product that guarantees its CFU count only at time of manufacture, and the one the brand files under Women's Health and Men's Health simultaneously.
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 Torn down 2026-07-31, after the founding cohort of 27 was frozen. It sits outside every D27 denominator the site publishes.
- 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.
- What did not survive verification
- Part of this page was refuted or could not be reproduced Two things on this page are bounded and must not be quoted loosely. First, the 5x overage implied by the pairing of "(2 billion CFU)" and "(formulated with 10 billion CFU at time of manufacture)" comes from the brand's 2016 off-market label, DSLD 66762 — not from the current label, which carries only the larger figure. "Probio Defense delivers only 2 billion CFU" is not a publishable statement about the product on sale. Second, the 16, 8 and 8 strain-matched RCT counts were verified for existence and strain identity only; the direction, statistical power and funding independence of those trials were not checked, so nothing here supports the words "clinically proven". What did survive verification, in full: the UPC match between the live page and DSLD 303824, the machine-readable panel, all three strain designators, the at-manufacture basis, and the cross-listing of the same SKU under both Men's Health and Women's Health.
The Label Verifiability Score for this product
68.2 out of 100
Rank 56 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 | 3 of 3 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 3 / 3 = 1.0000 | 0.2400 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 0 of 3 organism slots have an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 0 / 3 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
| What the CFU count is measured against | 0.22 | Potency basis "at-manufacture": CFU figure printed yes, single basis stated yes, basis reaches expiry no — 2 of 3. | 2 / 3 = 0.6667 | 0.146667 |
| Printed designators that lead to a human trial | 0.20 | 3 of 3 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. | 3 / 3 = 1.0000 | 0.2000 |
| 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 |
0.586667 — the last column added up — divided by 0.86, the weight this record could answer, is 0.6822. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 68.2 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 | Formulated with 10 Billion CFU at time of manufacture, per capsule (Probio Defense Blend, 51.553 mg) |
| What that count is measured against | At manufacture only |
| Strain designators | All organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 3 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
"†Formulated with 10 Billion CFU‡ at time of manufacture" · "‡Colony-Forming Units". Identical on the live page and in DSLD 303824.
The panel’s own words on potency, verbatim.
The count is stated at time of manufacture only. The panel makes no commitment about what is alive when you swallow it.
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 helveticus | Rosell-52 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | ("Lactobacillus helveticus R0052"[All Fields]) AND (randomized controlled trial[pt]) |
| Lactobacillus rhamnosus (correct name: Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus) | Rosell-11 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | ("Lactobacillus rhamnosus R0011"[All Fields]) AND (randomized controlled trial[pt]) |
| Bifidobacterium longum | Rosell-175 | — not stated separately | Human RCT | ("Bifidobacterium longum R0175"[All Fields]) AND (randomized controlled trial[pt]) |
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 303824 (opens in a new tab) captured NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record, on-market, entered 2023-12-14, UPC-matched to the live page. Fully machine-readable — no image transcription was needed for this product, which makes it the only one of its batch whose panel exists as structured data. Source for the Supplement Facts (zinc 2 mg / 18% DV as zinc yeast; selenium 12.5 mcg / 23% DV as selenium yeast; Probio Defense Blend 51.553 mg; Other Ingredients potato starch, capsule (hypromellose and water), magnesium stearate, ascorbic acid; "Contains: Milk and Soy"), the at-manufacture footnote, the label seals, and DSLD's own coding of the claims as Structure/Function (LanguaL P0265).
- Dated capture of the brand’s own page — xymogen-probio-defense-84c-2026-07-31https://www.xymogen.com/Full-Catalog/Male-Health/Probio-Defense-84c/p/000000000300000926 — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured Live product page, HTTP 200. States "UPC #: 0871149000363", matching the DSLD record. Source for pricing ($59.99 one-time, $53.99 autoship), the fully disclosed autoship terms including the promo-stacking rule, the refrigerated-shipping statement, the Institut Pasteur deposit claim, the four structure/function claims with the FDA disclaimer, and the "Related health categories" block that cross-lists the SKU under both Men's Health and Women's Health.
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, 3 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
$1.43 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $59.99 USD
- What that buys
- 84-capsule bottle (42 servings, 1 capsule twice daily). $53.99 on Autoship.
- Price checked
- — the source we read it fromhttps://www.xymogen.com/Full-Catalog/Male-Health/Probio-Defense-84c/p/000000000300000926 — 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 |
|---|---|---|
| NSF Certified (claimed in site navigation as "NSF Certified + XYMOGEN Athletix") | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| "Third-Party Verified GMP Compliant" (label seal) | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| ePV (ePedigree Verification) | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| Per-lot certificates of analysis | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
NSF Certified (claimed in site navigation as "NSF Certified + XYMOGEN Athletix")
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
nsf.org returned HTTP 403 to automated request, so the issuer's register could not be reached and no claim is made in either direction. There is a scope trap worth naming separately: the NSF claim in XYMOGEN's own navigation is bound to "XYMOGEN Athletix", a different product line. Probio Defense is not in the Athletix line and no NSF mark appears among this SKU's label seals in DSLD 303824. The reasonable reading is that the certification is line-scoped and does not extend to this SKU — but since the register is unreachable, that is recorded as unverified, not as absent. The brand's own dedicated NSF page returned HTTP 404 on two URL forms.
"Third-Party Verified GMP Compliant" (label seal)
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
Recorded in DSLD 303824's Seals/Symbols field. It names no certifying body, so there is no register to query.
ePV (ePedigree Verification)
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
A label seal recorded in DSLD 303824. ePedigree Verification is an anti-diversion and authenticity mechanism — it addresses grey-market resale, not product quality. It must not be read as a certification of contents.
Per-lot certificates of analysis
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
The Quality page states, verbatim: "Every batch of every formula has its own unique certificate of analysis showing our quality testing results for each lot number. We provide certificates of analysis upon request." Per-lot CoAs are a genuine quality practice and better than most of this category; gating them behind an email request is weaker than publishing them. The product page renders a "Certificate of Analysis" control, but it did not resolve to a public document — the linked media endpoints returned HTTP 403 and 400.
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 cfu-guaranteed-only-at-time-of-manufacture
The label footnote reads "†Formulated with 10 Billion CFU‡ at time of manufacture", stated identically on the live page and in the DSLD record. This is the weak form of the CFU claim: it guarantees nothing at the point the consumer swallows it. It is made more pointed by the fact that XYMOGEN ships this product refrigerated and can substantiate the cold chain — "a 48,500-cubic-foot drive-in refrigerator, to ensure proper storage of probiotics and temperature-sensitive materials". A brand that ships probiotics refrigerated and still declines to guarantee potency at expiry is making a deliberate choice.
The record: DSLD 303824 and xymogen.com PDP, both 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 2 the-brands-own-2016-label-printed-a-second-cfu-figure-this-one-does-not
The superseded 2016 DSLD record for the same three-strain formula states the blend note verbatim as "Probio Defense Blend Note: (2 billion CFU) (formulated with 10 billion CFU at time of manufacture)". On the brand's own earlier panel the at-manufacture figure and a second, smaller figure appeared side by side. The current label carries only the larger number. The removal of the second number is itself the finding.
The record: DSLD 66762 (2016, off-market) versus DSLD 303824 (2023, on-market) — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 3 proprietary-blend-at-51-553-mg-with-no-per-strain-cfu
Three strains are named — which is more than any other product in this project manages — and their individual doses are not. 51.553 mg of blend, no split. The named strains carry real trial literature, and no trial dose can be matched to this product's dose.
The record: DSLD 303824 structured ingredient data, 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 4 the-identical-sku-is-filed-under-both-mens-health-and-womens-health
The product sits in XYMOGEN's Male Health catalogue, and the same product page renders a "Related health categories" block reading "Gut Health · Immune · Men's Health · Probiotic · Women's Health". Composition confirms there is nothing male-specific in it: three commodity GI and immune strains, zinc 2 mg, selenium 12.5 mcg, and no prostate, urinary, androgen-related or male-associated ingredient anywhere. Nothing in the formula, the claims, the directions or the label text references male physiology at any point.
The record: xymogen.com PDP for SKU 000000000300000926, 2026-07-31 — open ithttps://www.xymogen.com/Full-Catalog/Male-Health/Probio-Defense-84c/p/000000000300000926 — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 5 supports-lactose-tolerance-on-a-product-declaring-contains-milk
One of the four label claims is "Supports Lactose Tolerance*". The allergen declaration on the same label reads "Contains: Milk and Soy."
The record: DSLD 303824 label statements and allergen declaration, 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 6 practitioner-channel-pricing-at-the-most-expensive-cfu-in-its-batch
$1.43 a day one-time, $1.29 on autoship, for 10 billion CFU at manufacture across three strains. On a cost-per-CFU basis that is the most expensive product in its batch by an order of magnitude. What is being paid for is strain identity and cold chain rather than dose — which is a defensible thing to pay for, and is stated here so a reader can decide that for themselves.
The record: xymogen.com PDP, $59.99 / 84 capsules / 42 days, 2026-07-31 — open ithttps://www.xymogen.com/Full-Catalog/Male-Health/Probio-Defense-84c/p/000000000300000926 — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
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.
- NSF Certified (claimed in site navigation as "NSF Certified + XYMOGEN Athletix") status
- nsf.org returned HTTP 403 to automated request, so the issuer's register could not be reached and no claim is made in either direction. There is a scope trap worth naming separately: the NSF claim in XYMOGEN's own navigation is bound to "XYMOGEN Athletix", a different product line. Probio Defense is not in the Athletix line and no NSF mark appears among this SKU's label seals in DSLD 303824. The reasonable reading is that the certification is line-scoped and does not extend to this SKU — but since the register is unreachable, that is recorded as unverified, not as absent. The brand's own dedicated NSF page returned HTTP 404 on two URL forms.
- "Third-Party Verified GMP Compliant" (label seal) status
- Recorded in DSLD 303824's Seals/Symbols field. It names no certifying body, so there is no register to query.
- ePV (ePedigree Verification) status
- A label seal recorded in DSLD 303824. ePedigree Verification is an anti-diversion and authenticity mechanism — it addresses grey-market resale, not product quality. It must not be read as a certification of contents.
- Per-lot certificates of analysis status
- The Quality page states, verbatim: "Every batch of every formula has its own unique certificate of analysis showing our quality testing results for each lot number. We provide certificates of analysis upon request." Per-lot CoAs are a genuine quality practice and better than most of this category; gating them behind an email request is weaker than publishing them. The product page renders a "Certificate of Analysis" control, but it did not resolve to a public document — the linked media endpoints returned HTTP 403 and 400.
- Per-strain CFU
- Three named strains share one 51.553 mg "Probio Defense Blend" with no individual doses. A buyer cannot tell whether R0175 is 5 billion or 5 million. This is the single fix that would make the product's evidence position airtight: the trials establish that these agents have been studied, and without a per-strain dose they cannot establish that this capsule delivers a studied amount.
- Whether XYMOGEN holds NSF certification for this SKU
- nsf.org returned HTTP 403 to automated request. No claim is made in either direction. What can be said is that the brand's own navigation scopes the NSF claim to the Athletix line, which this product is not in, and that no NSF mark appears among this SKU's label seals in DSLD.
- A published certificate of analysis
- CoAs exist per lot by the brand's own account but are provided "upon request" by email or phone rather than published. The PDP's Certificate of Analysis control did not resolve to a public document; the media endpoints returned HTTP 403 and 400.
- The direction, quality or independence of the 16/8/8 strain-matched trials
- Counts and strain identity were verified. Whether those trials were positive, adequately powered, or independent of Lallemand was not. The publishable finding is that strain-matched trials exist and can be looked up — not that anything is "clinically proven".
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.
Give this product what it has earned, because in this audit it is close to unique.
It names every strain it contains. Lactobacillus helveticus Rosell-52, Lactobacillus rhamnosus Rosell-11, Bifidobacterium longum Rosell-175 — Institut Rosell (Lallemand) designations, equivalently written R0052 / R0011 / R0175, with the label stating outright that “The three strains in Probio Defense are registered in the National Collection of Microorganism Cultures at the Institut Pasteur in France.” That is a deposited-culture identity claim, the thing almost nothing else in this category makes.
Because the strains are named, the evidence question is answerable, and the answers are real and reproducible: 16, 8 and 8 RCT-tagged records under the exact designators, plus 4 RCTs of the R0052 + R0175 combination. Anyone can re-run the query strings on this page and get the same counts.
Its panel is machine-readable in the US government’s own label database, UPC-matched to the live page. Its selenium is 12.5 mcg — one-sixteenth of the dose that makes a different men’s product in this audit dangerous. It ships refrigerated, with the cold-chain infrastructure to back that up. It issues per-lot certificates of analysis. And it claims less than its own strains’ literature would permit: it holds a pairing famous for stress-axis trials and makes no mood claim, sells to men and makes no testosterone, prostate or sperm claim.
Now the three defects, which are enough on their own.
The CFU count is guaranteed only at time of manufacture — the weak form, stated twice, guaranteeing nothing at the point the capsule is swallowed. On a product that is shipped cold precisely because these organisms decay, that is a deliberate choice.
The blend discloses no per-strain dose. 51.553 mg, three strains, no split. So the trials establish that these agents have been studied; they cannot establish that this capsule delivers a studied amount. That is the single fix that would make the evidence position airtight.
And the men’s question answers itself. XYMOGEN lists this SKU under Male Health — and the same page files it under “Gut Health · Immune · Men’s Health · Probiotic · Women’s Health.” One product, cross-listed to both genders, by the brand’s own taxonomy. Nothing in the formula references male physiology at any point.