Not all pregnancy tests are made equally. Here are the ones to avoid.

Waiting for the result of a pregnancy test can be the longest few minutes ever. It may be only two or three minutes - but theyll feel eternal. So when youre waiting for those colorful lines to appear or for the screen to show a smiley face, it helps a lot to know that the test is reliable. False positives and negatives are just too nerve-wracking.

It doesnt matter if the test youre using is digital, manual, a strip test or a plastic one, biodegradable or a blood test - all pregnancy tests rely on a single hormone to detect whether or not a woman is pregnant. Theyre all looking for human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), only found in the body during pregnancy. The sole job of this hormone is to instruct your body not to shed the uterine lining as it would normally do during menstruation - you'll be needing it.

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Even though many home testing brands claim to detect hCG as early as a week after conception, its best to wait a bit longer. According to the Mayo Clinic in the early days of pregnancy, the hCG concentration increases rapidly doubling every two to three days. The earlier you take the home pregnancy test, the harder it might be for the test to detect hCG. Waiting is one way to avoid a false positive or false-negative. In other words, its a good way to be sure the test is in fact accurate.

There are dozens of types of home pregnancytests, and it can be very confusing to choose one. There are digital wands that show the words pregnant or not pregnant or a friendly smiley face, but these are more expensive. Or there are simple paper strips - they dont look fancy, but you can buy them in bulk. Some claim to be biodegradable, some claim to tell you in seconds if youre having a baby.

There are a few things to be aware of when administering the test. First, it turns out that there is a wrong way to pee on a stick even though it sounds straightforward. Doing it wrong can raise the chances of a false result, so make sure not to drink too many fluids right before taking the test and to hold it the right way up. That way you can make sure that your urine isnt too diluted and that the sensitive strip will be exposed to enough hCG to detect its presence.

Next, while digital tests are tempting to buy because they lack ambivalence, they arent necessarily more precise and actually take longer to show results. Its true that theres no hemming and hawing about whether something is or isnt a line, but a recent review from The New York Times showed that digital tests can take up to three minutes while strip tests sometimes show the same results in 30 seconds. So for those who want to minimize holding their breath, they might not be the way to go. Digital tests are really just manual tests with a battery and a sensor that reads the lines for you. writes Leigh Krietsch Boerner in her review for the Times.

The Times reviewed ten types of tests and chose the First Response Early Result and Clearblue Rapid Detection as their favorites for their speed, accuracy and comfortable design.

Not very, but enough that you should always confirm a pregnancy with a physician. Its also a good idea to retake a home test a week after to confirm the results.

Ann Gronowski, PhD, is a Professor of Pathology & Immunology and Obstetrics & Gynecology at Washington University in St. Louis who made waves over the past decade for her research into home pregnancy tests. Her research began after a patient who claimed to be pregnant came into an ER with spotting and cramps but tested negative with the regular urine stick that the doctors used. She was certain she was pregnant, so we performed a blood test and an ultrasound, both of which confirmed she was pregnant, Dr. Gronowski told Futurity.

Two papers published by Dr. Gronowski and her collaborators showed that, of the eleven tests they looked at, seven were somewhat susceptible, two were highly susceptible, with two not being susceptible at all to false results. The worst one gave false negatives in 5 percent of the urine samples of pregnant women tested. That was, unfortunately, the test we were using when that initial patient came in, she said.

The scientists working on this could not divulge the names of the specific brands tested, for reasons of liability. However, since the first paper on this topic was published in 2009, the FDA has addressed the issues that the scientists had raised. However, they didnt change the ruling on previously approved, less precise tests, so its still a concern.

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Sources:FDA,Futurity,The New York Times,Mayo Clinic

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Knowing If A Pregnancy Test Brand Is Unreliable | BabyGaga - BabyGaga

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