Angelika Sharma at home in Livingston, N.J., with her 3-year-old daughter Annika.
Sharma turned to a medical start-up to learn the cause of her daughter's food allergies. (Melanie Landsman for The Washington Post) Angelika Sharma was desperate. An array of basic first foods - from bananas to sweet potatoes - caused her six-month old Annika to vomit uncontrollably, so many times in one night that she landed in the hospital for dehydration.
Half a dozen pediatric specialists largely dismissed her daughter’s ailments, Sharma said, forcing her to leave her job as a hospitality executive, because “you can’t just have any babysitter looking after a child” with such serious reactions to food. After a year and a half, an answer came finally in the form of a Facebook ad for Tiny Health, a Silicon Valley start-up that could test her baby’s gut microbiome. Using a bead of stool swabbed from a diaper, the company diagnosed the problem: Annika’s gut was overcrowded with P.
vulgatus , a common bacteria. A company nutritionist recommended a probiotic, sauerkraut and exposure to animal microbes through daily visits to the petting zoo. Within months, Annika’s food reactions were normal.
More tests showed a gut transformed. Sharma has a meal with her daughter. (Melanie Landsman for The Washington Post) A new world of DIY testing is changing the relationship between physicians and patients, allowing people like Sharma to bypass the doctors office and take medical tests on their ow.
