Are pregnancy test strips accurate?

Women who are pregnant for the first time are often not aware of the early symptoms of pregnancy. So sometimes women also mistake the situation of not being pregnant as being pregnant. However, it is common sense for every woman to suspect pregnancy if she does not have normal menstruation. Women who are pregnant for the first time often make mistakes. Common ways to detect pregnancy are pregnancy test sticks and pregnancy test paper. So are pregnancy test strips accurate?

The accuracy rate of pregnancy test strips in detecting pregnancy is still relatively high, but due to the influence of the quality of the pregnancy test strips and other hormones in the body, sometimes false negatives or false positives will appear. If the color of your morning urine continues to darken every morning, the accuracy rate is still relatively high, indicating that you are pregnant.

If the color gradually becomes lighter or darkens inconspicuously during the examination, you must go to the hospital to check the chorionic gonadotropin in the blood. This is because sometimes a false positive may occur due to interference from other hormones. Therefore, as long as the chorionic gonadotropin level is elevated in the blood test, it is confirmed that you are pregnant.

For many women, the first choice to check whether they are pregnant is to use pregnancy test strips. So are pregnancy test strips accurate? According to expert statistics, the accuracy of pregnancy test strips varies greatly, ranging from 50% to 98%.

The working principle of the pregnancy test paper is to detect the hCG value, which is the value of human chorionic gonadotropin. This hormone is produced by the placenta and usually appears in the urine a few days after pregnancy. However, due to the small amount, it is difficult to test it at the beginning and it becomes increasingly obvious after 10 to 14 days.

Although many types of early pregnancy test strips indicate that women can do a pregnancy self-test one day after missing their normal menstrual period, in fact, not all pregnant women release hCG hormones at the same speed and in the same amount. This varies from person to person. If a urine test is done too early, a negative result may be false. Therefore, it is best to do a pregnancy self-test two weeks after your period is late, as the result will be more accurate. Be sure to pay attention to the production date on the packaging box and do not use expired test cards, as chemical agents will become ineffective over time.

In general, no matter what the results of self-tests are, the most important thing for women is to trust their own physical symptoms. If you find yourself experiencing bleeding, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, frequent urination, breast swelling, picky eating, drowsiness, etc. after menopause, then you are very likely pregnant and it is best to go to the hospital for a blood test.