Can I Buy A Pregnancy Test At 15

How accurate is this test? The accuracy of this test depends on how well you follow the instructions and interpret the results. If you mishandle or misunderstand the test kit, you may get poor results.

can i buy a pregnancy test at 15

Most pregnancy tests have about the same ability to detect hCG, but their ability to show whether or not you are pregnant depends on how much hCG you are producing. If you test too early in your cycle or too close to the time you became pregnant, your placenta may not have had enough time to produce hCG. This would mean that you are pregnant but you got a negative test result.

Because many women have irregular periods, and women may miscalculate when their period is due, 10 to 20 pregnant women out of every 100 will not detect their pregnancy on the first day of their missed period.

How do you do this test? For most home pregnancy tests, you either hold a test strip in your urine stream or you collect your urine in a cup and dip your test strip into the cup. If you are pregnant, most test strips produce a colored line, but this will depend on the brand you purchased. Read the instructions for the test you bought and follow them carefully. Make sure you know how to get good results. The test usually takes only about 5 minutes.

The different tests for sale vary in their abilities to detect low levels of hCG. For the most reliable results, test 1-2 weeks after you miss your period. There are some tests for sale that are sensitive enough to show you are pregnant before you miss your period.

You can improve your chances for an accurate result by using your first morning urine for the test. If you are pregnant, it will have more hCG in it than later urines. If you think you are pregnant, but your first test was negative, you can take the test again after several days. Since the amount of hCG increases rapidly when you are pregnant, you may get a positive test on later days. Some test kits come with more than one test in them to allow you to repeat the test.

Is this test similar to the one my doctor uses? The home pregnancy test and the test your doctor uses are similar in their abilities to detect hCG, however your doctor is probably more experienced in running the test. If you produce only a small amount of hCG, your doctor may not be able to detect it any better than you could. Your doctor may also use a blood test to see if you are pregnant. Finally, your doctor may have more information about you from your history, physical exam, and other tests that may give a more reliable result.

Do negative test results mean that you are not pregnant? No, there are several reasons why you could receive false negative test results. If you tested too early in your cycle, your placenta may not have had time to produce enough hCG for the test to detect. Or, you may not have waited long enough before you took this test.

Manufacturers who market tests in both Europe and the USA tend to conform to these definitions across both markets (e.g. Clearblue, First Response, and EPT brands). Device accuracy, which is usually considered to be the percentage of correct detection of negative and positive results (at concentrations of hCG greater than test sensitivity) using urine samples from women seeking to know pregnancy status, are also often calculated. However, it is unclear as to whether other tests available in Germany conform to these definitions and it is therefore not possible to make objectivecomparisons between tests based on their packaging claims.

Unfortunately, no recent studies have investigated home pregnancy test performance, and indeed, there are no historical studies evaluating the myriad tests now available on the German market. In the absence of any available data on test performance and the lack of standardisation for evaluating test credentials, any declaration of test accuracy on the package labelling is potentially misleading.

The type of test format is another factor that can influence the accuracy of pregnancy tests when used at home. Home pregnancy tests are available in three main formats: strip, cassette and midstream test sticks. Strip tests have no casing or sample application wick; they therefore require women to collect a urine sample and then dip the small strip-like device into the sample until the urine reaches a prescribed line on the strip. The cassette format requires women to collect a urine sample, following which the user has to add a small quantity of the collected urine to thecassette-like test device using a plastic bulb supplied with the test. Both the strip and cassette test formats were primarily designed to be used by healthcare professionals in a clinical setting. However, they are also available for women to use at home. In contrast, the midstream test stick format was specifically developed to enable women to carry out pregnancy tests easily at home. Midstream test sticks consist of a stick with an absorbent wick at one end, which is placed in the urine stream or dipped into collected urine to obtain a sample.

Another cause of observed false negative results for home pregnancy tests can be due to unusually high concentrations of hCGβcf, the core fragment of β-hCG, which can occur in later stages of pregnancy 39. Tests recently cleared for marketing in the USA by the Food and Drugs Administration have been required to demonstrate that they do not produce false negative results when used in later pregnancy. European guidelines require manufacturers to do their own risk assessments; however, specific performance requirements are not defined in the directive.More prescriptive European guidelines would be beneficial to ensure that similar risks are taken into consideration by all manufacturers.

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DirectoriesA to Z IndexDepartments & ProgramsAdministrative Offices & ServicesMaps & DirectionsStreet & Pedestrian ClosuresCalendarContactGivingGiving InquiryPoliciesLinks to Third-Party WebsitesWebsite Privacy Policy Visit the News HubNews ReleaseFlaw in many home pregnancy tests can return false negative resultsTest results later in pregnancy may be misleading

Each year, women in the U.S. rely on some 20 million home pregnancy tests to learn potentially life-altering news. Despite marketing claims that such tests are 99 percent accurate, research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis over the past decade has shown that up to 5 percent of pregnancy tests return results indicating a woman is not pregnant when, in reality, she is.

Makers of pregnancy tests advise that tests taken in the first week or two after conception could be inaccurate because pregnancy hormones may not have risen high enough to be detected. But Ann Gronowski, PhD, a professor of pathology and immunology, and of obstetrics and gynecology, and medical director of core laboratory services at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, discovered that pregnancy tests can also give incorrect results to women five weeks or more into their pregnancies, when hormone levels tend to be very high. She published the first paper describing this problem in 2009, and since then has continued studying and raising the alarm on this serious but under-recognized issue. Recently, she and colleagues published a paper in the journal Clinical Chemistry, in which they evaluated how likely several pregnancy devices were to give false negative results.

But a degraded form of the hormone also can be found in the urine, and in some devices the first antibody will bind to the degraded form. The amount of the degraded form, called hCG core fragment, goes up as pregnancy progresses. The more of the fragmented hormone that is around, the more likely the first antibody will accidentally capture the fragment instead of the intact hormone. However, the signal antibody does not respond to the fragment so it does not change color when that happens, and therefore you get a negative result even though the hormone might be present.

It depends on the device. They all use different antibodies, and some are better at discriminating the full hormone from the fragment than others. We looked at 11 of the most commonly used hospital pregnancy tests to see if they were susceptible to false negatives when levels of the hormone fragment were high. Seven were somewhat susceptible, two were highly susceptible, and only two tests were not susceptible. 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. Based on our research, we have switched to a test that does not have this false-negative problem.

Based on our work, the Food and Drug Administration has acknowledged the need for pregnancy tests that are not susceptible to false negatives. The FDA requires that all new tests generate a positive signal even when concentrations of the fragmented hormone are high. Unfortunately, this requirement does not apply to tests that were already FDA-approved. 041b061a72