Understanding the Blood and Urine Pregnancy Test

You can perform a urine pregnancy test at home with the help of the pregnancy test kits available in the market. Then why should we go for a blood pregnancy test? The results of the urine pregnancy tests could vary depending on the level of hCG hormone detected in the urine.

In the blood there is no fooling around. You can get accurate results in blood tests done for pregnancy. There are people who go for a blood pregnancy test after performing a urine pregnancy test.

Knowing the pregnancy hormone

hCG is known as the pregnancy hormone and this hormone is present only when a women is pregnant. The urine pregnancy tests that you do at home with the help of the pregnancy kits are based on the detection of this pregnancy hormone. The levels of the hormones vary with different women and there is no sure way to determine how much it will be.

The urine pregnancy tests that are done with the kits detects the hormone levels in the urine. There is a urine pregnancy test kit in the market called the First Response. This kit can detect the hormone levels up to 6.5 mIU. Most of the kits that you get in the market detect only up to 25 mIU, 40 mIU, and 100 mIU. As the sensitivity of the kit increases the cost also increases.

Blood tests for Pregnancy

There are two types of blood tests done for detecting pregnancy. One is the qualitative and the other is the quantitative. The qualitative blood test is aimed at detecting only the presence of the hCG hormone which determines whether the woman is pregnant or not.

The quantitative is aimed at determining the amount of hCG hormone present. This test is used to find out if there are multiple pregnancies. This test is also useful in people who take fertility drugs to get pregnant.

Drawback of Urine Pregnancy Test

There is one drawback in the Urine Pregnancy Test. False positives and false negatives are possible in the urine pregnancy test. To understand the term false positive you should know what happens inside the womans body.

In most of the cases there might be an embryo and it might not get through for some reasons and might get detached from the uterine wall and cleaned during the menstrual cycle. Sometimes it is possible that you get a positive result when the embryo is formed and then you might get negative result after it has been washed away by the menstrual cycle. That is why you have to wait for a few days after the period stops to do a urine pregnancy test.

Due to low levels of hCG it is possible to get a negative result even if you are pregnant. This is very common as people are quite eager to know the result early while the hormone level is not sufficient to indicate pregnancy.

Consult your Doctor

Whatever be the result of the urine pregnancy test, it is better you consult the doctor to check whether you are pregnant. Even if you do a urine pregnancy test at home, it is better to confirm the result with the doctor. So do visit your doctor if you know that you might be pregnant.

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