Pregnancy Test

Introduction

File:Pregnancy test

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Links: Implantation | Placenta Development | Week 2 | Pregnancy Test

Some Recent Findings

Use of a checklist to rule out pregnancy: a systematic review "Safe initiation of contraceptive methods requires that pregnancy be excluded. The World Health Organization has developed a list of criteria to assess pregnancy status. This review was conducted to evaluate the evidence regarding these criteria in excluding pregnancy. Four analyses of data from three studies met inclusion criteria as direct evidence. All were diagnostic accuracy studies of fair quality that evaluated the performance of a pregnancy checklist compared with urine pregnancy test to rule out pregnancy. The performance of the checklist varied, with sensitivity ranging from 55-100% and specificity ranging from 39-89%. The negative predictive value was consistent across studies at 99-100%."

History

Xenopus clawed frogs

• 1928 - Bernhard Zondek and Selman Aschheim procedure that measured the increase in gonadotrophic substance in the urine of a pregnant woman.
  • Immature mice injection with urine led to ovarian changes after a few days.
  • Xenopus clawed frog replaced mice, injection with urine stimulated the females to lay eggs that were easily seen the next day.
• 1960s - immunological tests for chorionic gonadotropin.
• 1972 - Research on hCG at NIH by Judith Vaitukaitis and Griff Ross.
• 1978 - USA first home pregnancy tests available.

Judith Vaitukaitis and Griff Ross (c1971)

References

Reviews

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Articles

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Search Pubmed

Search Pubmed: Pregnancy Test | hCG

Search Bookshelf: Pregnancy Test | Human Chorionic Gonadotropin

External Links

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• NIH A thin blue line - The History of the Pregnancy Test Kit | Timeline

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Cite this page: Hill, M.A. (2026, October 30) Embryology Pregnancy Test. Retrieved from https://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/embryology/index.php/Pregnancy_Test

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© Dr Mark Hill 2026, UNSW Embryology ISBN: 978 0 7334 2609 4 - UNSW CRICOS Provider Code No. 00098G