Pregnancy Test Review

Reviews analyze the sensitivity and reliability of home pregnancy tests

Identifying the best home pregnancy tests (HPTs) comes down to three criteria: the sensitivity of the test, its reliability and its ease of interpretation. If you take the labels for most HPTs at face value, they should be equivalent as they all offer 99 percent accuracy and range from being able to test on the first day of your missed period to as many as six days before. However in clinical testing these claims begin to fall apart, whether due to test error, the natural variability amongst women's menstrual cycles or because they have no factual basis.

To move beyond the manufacturers' claims, we examined scientific studies from various medical journals including the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association, the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Clinical Chemistry and the Journal of the American Medical Association. These scientific studies along with testing done by a consumer group helped us determine the true sensitivities of more than 18 pregnancy tests and which brands were more apt to have faulty devices. Though the consumer group's testing and some of the scientific studies are more than five years old, the technology and the issues common to HPTs have changed very little, and thus their results are still valid .  

We also examined reviews from Parents.com, About.com and PeeOnAStick.com. Though their testing is less rigorous than that of the medical journals, those sources do offer some insights on which pregnancy tests are easiest to use and details on how each test works. Other sites, such as FertilityPlus.org, PreconceptionWeekly.com and BabyHopes.com, do not perform their own testing, but do provide useful comparison charts of the sensitivity of each pregnancy test as reported by the manufacturers. In addition these sites have useful summaries in plain English of the results of some of the scientific studies performed on pregnancy tests.

Lastly, we looked at user reviews on Viewpoints.com, Drugstore.com and Epinions.com. Though only a few of the home pregnancy tests had significant numbers of user reviews, they were useful in highlighting problem areas with each test. A user-generated chart on JustMommies.com was also helpful as it allows users to input if they had a problem with a specific HPT and how early in their cycles they were able to detect their pregnancies.

Claims approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be used by the manufacturers on the packaging of home pregnancy tests are often misleading and at times wholly inaccurate. Though most tests say they are 99 percent accurate and able to test on the first day of the missed period, not one brand is 99 percent accurate at detecting pregnancy on the first day of the missed period. Some of these claims can be made due to loopholes in FDA regulations. Some of the failures of home pregnancy tests are simply due to normal variances amongst women during early pregnancy, basic medical research shows. There comes a point when you just can't reliably test any earlier for pregnancy.