Types of Home Pregnancy Tests for the Uninitiated

There are so many types of home pregnancy tests in the average pharmacy you might be forgiven for thinking that there has been a medical breakthrough in recent years. The fact is that all of them rely on the same tried-and-tested chemical mechanism that was discovered decades ago, but in a desperate attempt to win market share, pharmaceutical companies are trying all sorts of novel packaging in order for the whole procedure to be more convenient and less awkward for the user.

Unfortunately, they haven’t really made too many advances on this front either, so you’ll be looking at test strips and urine collection cups most of the time. Chemical mixing tests are occasionally involved, and we’ll come to that shortly.

How These Work

All these types of home pregnancy tests are designed to detect pregnancy hormones in your urine sample. This chemical is produced once implantation takes place, and flows throughout your bloodstream until it is naturally excreted by your renal and urinary system (This is why blood tests from a doctor are almost always more accurate than any type of home pregnancy tests, but to date there is no safe way to extract sufficient amounts of blood in a home environment in order for pregnancy detection to be viable.)

These over-the-counter kits work only a few days after you have missed your period, and they have a higher false negative rate than a false positive rate. In plain language, a positive result is almost always accurate, but a negative one may simply mean that the hormones are not sufficiently concentrated. In these cases, you need to repeat the test in a week’s time, before you can be absolutely sure that you are not carrying a child.

Always be patient whatever the type of home pregnancy test you are taking, and read the results in accordance with any given instructions – and not a moment too soon.