Pregnancy Test

Introduction

File:Pregnancy test

The first of prenatal diagnostic tests. Through history there were a number of supposedly diagnostic tests to determine early pregnancy, the most obvious was the absence of an ongoing menstrual cycle in women of reproductive age. It was not until the early 20th century that the first

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Links: Menstrual Cycle | Week 2 | Implantation | Placenta Development | 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

• 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 test kits available.
• 1988 - first “one step” test, Clearblue Easy, a blue stripe appeared to indicate pregnancy.

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

External Links Notice - The dynamic nature of the internet may mean that some of these listed links may no longer function. If the link no longer works search the web with the link text or name. Links to any external commercial sites are provided for information purposes only and should never be considered an endorsement. UNSW Embryology is provided as an educational resource with no clinical information or commercial affiliation.

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

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Cite this page: Hill, M.A. (2026, October 29) 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