Tag Archives: Pregnancy

False Positive Pregnancy Tests

False Result With a hCG Test Kit

False results on pregnancy test kits are often fast to blame, even though false positives on hCG test kits are extremely rare. Many of the pregnancy test kits available are more than 95% accurate and almost never show a false result. Either way, many continue to see a false positive. There are many issues that can cause a pregnancy test kit to show a misleading result. I can see where getting would be frustrating to a women. Before any one relies on a home pregnancy test she should be made aware with some of the factors that can affect an accurate result.

What Causes This

There are many reasons that you should be aware of if you recently received a misleading result on your home pregnancy test kit. Than you can be reassured the next test kit you do shows an accurate result and can trust that. Everyone wants their pregnancy test kits to do what they are set out to do. What is the point in having a pregnancy test kit if it doesn’t even test accurately for pregnancy? Following are some of the issues affecting the results you see on a home pregnancy test kit.

A Recent Pregnancy

HCG, the pregnancy hormone, will not retrieve back to a non-pregnant number just as soon as a birth or a pregnancy loss occurs. If you take a home pregnancy test kit sooner than seven weeks after a birth or pregnancy loss you may get a misleading positive result. Therefore, a woman shouldn’t count on a pregnancy test kit any sooner then seven weeks after a pregnancy loss or a birth. The only exception would be if the woman knows that her hCG levels have returned to less than 5 mIU/ml. The only way a women can know for sure that her hCG levels are back down would be to take a blood hCG test preformed by a health care professional. Another way a woman can know if her hCG levels are back to a non-pregnant number would be to take a home pregnancy test kit and it was negative.

Evaporation Lines

If a woman thinks that she has suffered from a misleading positive hCG test kit, she may be seeing what is called an evaporation line. Evaporation lines form when some of the dye from the control line has bleed over. The control line is the line on a home pregnancy test that appears both when you are pregnant and when you are not pregnant to confirm that the test has worked. If you are witnessing an evaporation line than it will give an illusion that you have a positive pregnancy test. This occurs when a women looks at a pregnancy test more than ten minutes after it has been taken. You shouldn’t read results of a home pregnancy test after 10 minutes. If you want to be safer, you should read the results at about 5 minutes. The evaporation line can sometimes sink quicker than ten minutes after you take the test. If you feel like it could be an evaporation line than you should take the test again.

Chemical Pregnancies

Chemical pregnancies are an early pregnancy loss, usually occurring right around the time of your expected menstrual period. The causes of chemical pregnancies are generally the exact same as any other type of miscarriages, most likely due to chromosomal abnormalities. Research shows that 1 of 2 pregnancies end before a live birth; as staggering at the statics are, chemical pregnancies occur often. Due to the high sensitivity of pregnancy tests, it is now easy to see misleading positive results on pregnancy tests due to a chemical pregnancy. With chemical pregnancies a women receives a positive home pregnancy test, but than she goes on to experience her menstrual period with or without a second positive. Now that a woman believes that she has experienced a false positive.

I am a webmaster for a few trying to conceive sites because I really enjoy helping women conceive by detecting their ovulation.

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