Myoviridae LH01.
A specific bacteriophage strain that targets harmful gut bacteria. Part of the PreforPro phage blend. Targets and destroys specific harmful bacteria in your gut, clearing space for beneficial microbes to flourish.
Reviewed March 2026
- Category
- General
- Also filed under
- Targets specific harmful gut bacteriaSupports microbiome balancePart of studied PreforPro blend
What Myoviridae LH01 is, and what it does.
- Does it work
- Interesting science, but only studied as part of a 4-phage blend (PreforPro). You can't isolate what this single phage does on its own. The concept is solid, the individual evidence isn't there yet.
- How much to take
- 15 mg as part of the PreforPro blend. There's no standalone dosing data for this individual phage. You'll only find it combined with the other three strains.
- Time to feel it
- The four-phage blend it belongs to read changes in digestive comfort around weeks three to four. For this single phage on its own, nobody has measured a time course.
- The first dose
- Nothing noticeable on day one. Bacteriophages start working immediately at a microscopic level, but you won't feel the ecosystem shift for weeks.
- With regular use
- By weeks 3-4, some people in the PreforPro studies reported better digestion and less bloating. The phages keep working as long as their target bacteria are present, then naturally decline.
- How well tolerated
- Well tolerated. Bacteriophages are incredibly specific and can't infect human cells. Your gut already contains trillions of them. No known side effects or drug interactions.
- How it feels
- There's no sensation attached to it. Where it shows up is steadier digestion and less after-meal bloating across a few weeks, which is what the blend's trials tracked.
- The overlooked benefit
- It doses itself. A phage only multiplies where its target bacteria are and falls away once they are not, so the number of active particles tracks the population, not the capsule.
15mg a day is where Myoviridae LH01 works.
Source: Gindin et al., 2019 (PreforPro blend study)
The proof, claim by claim.
These words describe the research, not the molecule's worth. Research strength is how much work stands behind one claim, and it is never a product score.
- Selectively reduces harmful gut bacteria
- Improves digestive comfort
Questions people ask about Myoviridae LH01.
- Can a phage infect me?
- No. Bacteriophages are physically incapable of infecting human cells. They only target specific bacteria. It's like trying to plug a USB cable into a garden hose.
- Why can't I buy this phage alone?
- It only works as part of the 4-phage PreforPro cocktail. Each phage targets different bacteria. One phage alone has too narrow a range to be useful.
- Is this like taking an antibiotic?
- Similar concept, totally different execution. Antibiotics are carpet bombs (kill everything). Phages are sniper rifles (one specific target). Your good bacteria are well tolerated.
- How long do the phages survive in my gut?
- As long as their target bacteria exist, the phages replicate and persist. When targets run out, the phages naturally decline. It's a self-regulating system.
- Do I need to refrigerate phage supplements?
- Check the label. Most PreforPro products are shelf-stable at room temperature, but some manufacturers recommend refrigeration for longer shelf life.
Why these belong in the same formula. Each row says what the basis is, from settled biochemistry through to a trial that measured the pair.
A lytic phage narrows a specific bacterial population while a probiotic adds a defined organism, so the two act from opposite directions on the same community. Phage host range is narrow and strain specific, which is the basis for pairing a coliphage with lactobacilli or bifidobacteria that it does not infect. Whether the combination produces a different community outcome than either alone is not something the available sourcing settles.
Phage attachment depends on specific surface receptors, and a phage selected against Escherichia coli has no receptor to bind on a Lactobacillus cell wall. That specificity is why coliphage preparations and lactobacillus cultures are formulated side by side. The pairing is a compatibility statement grounded in phage biology, not a demonstrated combined effect.
Bifidobacteria present a different cell envelope from Escherichia coli and carry none of the receptors a coliphage recognises. Co-formulation therefore does not put the culture at risk from the phage. What the combination does to the wider community is a separate question the sourcing here does not answer.
Bifidobacterium lactis is unaffected by a phage selected against a Gram-negative host, which makes the two compatible in one capsule. Products pair them on exactly that basis. The compatibility is established microbiology. A combined outcome is not.
Inulin feeds fermentative Gram-positive populations while a coliphage acts on a Gram-negative target, so the two push the community in the same direction by different means. Phages carry no metabolism of their own and do not consume the substrate. The pairing is a synbiotic-style rationale rather than a measured combination.
Short-chain fructans are fermented by bifidobacteria and lactobacilli and support their expansion. A lytic phage removes a specific competing population without touching the substrate. Combining a substrate for the desirable organisms with a narrow lytic agent is coherent design, and it has not been measured here as a combination.
Galactooligosaccharides are fermented efficiently by bifidobacteria, which are outside a coliphage's host range. The substrate and the phage act on different members of the community. This is a design rationale drawn from established microbiology.
Resistant starch reaches the colon intact and is fermented to short-chain fatty acids, mainly by Gram-positive fermenters. A coliphage does not compete for that substrate and does not infect those fermenters. The two occupy different roles in the same formula.
Partially hydrolysed guar gum is a slowly fermented soluble fibre used where a gentler fermentation profile is wanted. It feeds bacteria that lie outside a coliphage's host range. The combination is a synbiotic-style pairing rather than a tested one.
Tailed phages lose infectivity in strongly acidic conditions, which is why oral phage preparations rely on enteric capsules or buffering to reach the colon intact. A bicarbonate buffer raises gastric pH transiently and is one of the approaches used for acid-labile actives. Whether it improves delivery for this specific preparation has not been measured here.
Activated charcoal has a very large adsorptive surface and binds organic material without selectivity, including protein-coated particles the size of a phage. Taken at the same time it would be expected to remove the phage from the lumen before it reaches a host cell. Separating the two by several hours is the practical handling.
Clay minerals bind viral particles strongly enough that they are used industrially to strip viruses from water. A binder taken with a phage preparation would be expected to reduce the number of active particles reaching the colon. This is a physical interaction rather than a biological one, and spacing doses is the answer.
A phage capsid is built entirely from protein subunits, and gastric pepsin cleaves protein at acidic pH. Supplemental pepsin adds to that proteolytic load at exactly the point where the phage is most vulnerable. An enteric capsule addresses the same problem from the formulation side.
Trypsin and chymotrypsin in a pancreatic enzyme blend act on protein substrates in the small intestine, which is where a released phage particle travels. Adding protease at that stage is a plausible route to losing active particles before the colon. The interaction is mechanistic. It has not been quantified for this preparation.
Multi-enzyme blends usually carry protease activity across a range of pH values. That activity does not distinguish a dietary protein from a viral capsid protein. Where both are in one formula, delayed-release protection of the phage is the usual design answer.
Butyrate is what the desirable fermenters produce, and it is the main energy substrate for colonic epithelial cells. A phage preparation aims at the community composition upstream of that production. Supplying butyrate directly and shaping the community are different levers on the same endpoint.
Lactoferrin binds iron tightly and interacts with the lipopolysaccharide layer of Gram-negative cells, which is the same envelope a coliphage targets. Whether that binding helps or hinders phage adsorption at the receptor is not established, so the direction of any real interaction is open. The pairing appears in gut formulas on the shared Gram-negative rationale.
Saccharomyces boulardii is a yeast and carries none of the bacterial surface receptors a phage recognises, so a phage cannot infect it. The two are paired in gut formulas on that compatibility. The compatibility is established biology. A combined effect is not something the available sourcing establishes.
Talk to a doctor before taking Myoviridae LH01 if any of these apply to you: Individual strain not studied in isolation, Bacteriophage therapy is still emerging. These are flags to check first, not effects Myoviridae LH01 is known to cause.
Not medical advice. Show the label to your pharmacist.What Myoviridae LH01 actually does.
Myoviridae are tailed bacteriophages. The icosahedral head holds a double-stranded DNA genome, and the contractile tail sheath drives the tail tube through the bacterial envelope during infection.
Infection starts when the tail fibres latch onto specific receptors on the bacterial surface. That lock and key fit is why a given phage hits only a narrow set of bacterial strains and leaves unrelated genera untouched.
A lytic phage copies itself inside the host bacterium and gets out by bursting the cell, using a holin to punch holes in the membrane and an endolysin to cut the peptidoglycan wall.
Bacteriophages infect bacteria and nothing else. They have no receptor for human cells and cannot replicate in them, which is the basis for using them as a narrow, targeted antimicrobial approach rather than a broad one.
Where Myoviridae LH01 comes from.
Phages are grown on the very bacteria they attack. The bacteria are cultured in a tank, the phage is added, and it multiplies until the bacterial cells burst. What remains is filtered and washed repeatedly to strip out bacterial debris, then counted, freeze-dried with a sugar that protects it through drying, and packed into capsules.
Produced by a cultured organism rather than harvested. The strain is selected and the conditions are controlled, so batches sit closer together than a field crop.
Production begins with a characterised host strain of the target bacterium grown in a defined broth. The phage cannot be produced without its host, since it carries no metabolism of its own.
The host culture is inoculated with a seed stock of the phage at a set multiplicity, and the phage replicates through successive lytic cycles until the culture clears.
Cell debris is removed by centrifugation and depth filtration, leaving a clarified lysate carrying the phage particles.
The lysate is concentrated and washed by tangential flow filtration, then passed through chromatographic or affinity steps aimed at removing endotoxin and residual host protein and DNA.
Activity is measured as plaque-forming units per gram against the host strain, and the concentrate is diluted with a stabiliser to the label titre with an overage allowed for storage decline.
The titred suspension is freeze-dried with a cryoprotectant, blended with carriers, and filled into capsules under controlled humidity.
Getting Myoviridae LH01 from food.
The whole-food sources on file. A supplement closes the gap, it does not replace dinner.
A gram-for-gram figure (how much of each you would eat to match a dose) will appear here once it is sourced and reviewed. This page will not print a number it cannot cite.
The forms it comes in.
The essence, in one line each.
- In a 4-week randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in 68 healthy adults, adding a bacteriophage blend containing LH01 to a Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis probiotic showed a within-group improvement in a self-reported gut symptom score (p = 0.01) and a larger rise in Lactobacillus and short-chain fatty acid producing bacteria than the probiotic alone.Randomised trial. Grubb et al., 2020 (Nutrients). PMID 32824480 ↗
These are the studies our verdict leans on, chosen from the 8 we read for Myoviridae LH01. The full linked list is below.
FDA Disclaimer: These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is for educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Consult your healthcare provider before starting any supplement regimen.
