Hello, I am TTC and a bit frustrated with pregnancy tests and I want to share some information that might help women in a similar situation. I have had three pregnancies, the first resulted in a healthy baby girl now almost four! The other two sadly ended at six and seven weeks.
Every time I am pregnant and I take an OTC pregnancy test it comes out negative. I didn't test positive with my daughter until 7-8 weeks. The other two pregnancies NEVER tested positive, not even a blood test at the doctor though I had positive ultrasound.
My doctor told me not to trust pregnancy tests because some people have variants of hCG. I so I did some research on this and found out about the hCG variants that will give you a false negative.
Some women will produce 'hCG beta core fragments' either along with normal hCG or place of it. This hCGbcf binds with the hCG receptors on BOTH over the counter pregnancy tests and the kind used by doctors. Because pregnancy tests don't test for hCGbcf, the hCGbcf binding with the receptors creates a false negative. This is a called a 'hook effect'. If you are one of the small percentage of women who produces hCG variants pregnancy tests will not work for you. This is bad because false negatives can result in improper medical treatment and delayed prenatal care.
Now some good news! MD researchers in the USA are aware of this problem and in 2014 a few pregnancy test manufacturers changed their pregnancy tests to be able to detect hCGbcf! First Response Early Result OTC and Cen-Med Elite Plus One-Step Pregnancy Test (this one is only used by Dr. and hospitals) will show a positive even if you have hCHbcf. First Response Early Result is also very, very sensitive. For example clear blue shows positive at 25 mIU but First Response Early Result will show a positive at 6.3 mIU.
Anyway, I live in Germany right now and they don't have First Response here so I have to wait for them to ship from the UK before I can see if this test will work better for me.
If you think you are pregnant but get a negative I would trust your gut and try First Response or ask your doctor to do an ultrasound. I hope this information helps some women, the last couple of months I totally felt like a crazy woman suspecting I was pregnant but not able to understand why I always got negative test results. You can absolutely be pregnant and get a false negative!
x
Every time I am pregnant and I take an OTC pregnancy test it comes out negative. I didn't test positive with my daughter until 7-8 weeks. The other two pregnancies NEVER tested positive, not even a blood test at the doctor though I had positive ultrasound.
My doctor told me not to trust pregnancy tests because some people have variants of hCG. I so I did some research on this and found out about the hCG variants that will give you a false negative.
Some women will produce 'hCG beta core fragments' either along with normal hCG or place of it. This hCGbcf binds with the hCG receptors on BOTH over the counter pregnancy tests and the kind used by doctors. Because pregnancy tests don't test for hCGbcf, the hCGbcf binding with the receptors creates a false negative. This is a called a 'hook effect'. If you are one of the small percentage of women who produces hCG variants pregnancy tests will not work for you. This is bad because false negatives can result in improper medical treatment and delayed prenatal care.
Now some good news! MD researchers in the USA are aware of this problem and in 2014 a few pregnancy test manufacturers changed their pregnancy tests to be able to detect hCGbcf! First Response Early Result OTC and Cen-Med Elite Plus One-Step Pregnancy Test (this one is only used by Dr. and hospitals) will show a positive even if you have hCHbcf. First Response Early Result is also very, very sensitive. For example clear blue shows positive at 25 mIU but First Response Early Result will show a positive at 6.3 mIU.
Anyway, I live in Germany right now and they don't have First Response here so I have to wait for them to ship from the UK before I can see if this test will work better for me.
If you think you are pregnant but get a negative I would trust your gut and try First Response or ask your doctor to do an ultrasound. I hope this information helps some women, the last couple of months I totally felt like a crazy woman suspecting I was pregnant but not able to understand why I always got negative test results. You can absolutely be pregnant and get a false negative!
x
