

1 POSITIVE PREGNANCY TEST 3 NEGATIVE PLUS
Many tests show two lines when hCG is detected and one line when hCG isn’t detected, or a plus or minus sign.įor the line tests, sometimes, a faint-colored second line appears. If the pregnancy test instructions were not followed precisely, sometimes an evaporation line can be mistaken for a positive. Your doctor may recommend a blood test to get a more accurate test result.
1 POSITIVE PREGNANCY TEST 3 NEGATIVE PROFESSIONAL
If you get a false-positive test result and have ruled out other causes, consult a medical professional to test for these conditions. If you have any of the following, they might inflate your hCG levels and you might get a false-positive: * Ovarian cysts * Kidney disease * Urinary tract infection * Pituitary problems * And in some cases, ovarian cancer and other serious diseases Sometimes medical conditions can trigger a false-positive in urine tests. Medical Conditions Are Sometimes to Blame Once your physician knows what you’re taking, he or she can help you with over-the-counter test results. Tell your doctor if you’re taking any medication because various medicines can trigger false-positives. It is recommended to delay pregnancy testing until 1-2 weeks after the last injection or treatment. If a pregnancy test is taken within 7-14 days after fertility treatments, a false-positive can occur. Some of those medicines include hCG which helps follicles release mature eggs within a woman’s ovary.

If a woman is having a hard time getting pregnant, her doctor may put her on fertility treatments. Some Medications Can Trigger False-Positives If you take a pregnancy test within this window, you can get a false-positive result because the test is still detecting the pregnancy hormone and can’t tell that the levels are decreasing. The presence of hCG triggers a positive test result.Īfter an abortion or miscarriage, hCG levels start to go down over the a period of 9-35 days. HCG is produced by the cells surrounding a growing embryo. You Had A Miscarriage or Abortion RecentlyĪfter an embryo implants, it begins to secrete human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), the pregnancy hormone. The final two points, we’ll cover instances when the test accurately detects hCGs in a pregnancy that is not viable.

For the first five points below, we’ll cover false results where the test detects elevated hCG (the pregnancy hormone) and indicates a pregnancy that does not exist. But, in other cases, they detect the presence of an embryo, even if the pregnancy is not viable. In some cases, tests offer a false result. So what actually causes a false-positive test and how do you decrease the chances of it happening to you? We’ll cover the top reasons for false-positive pregnancy tests below, but if you’d like to learn more about how tests work, click here. But what about when a test comes back falsely-positive? A false-positive test result only happens less than 1% of the time, but when it does, it can make the following days or weeks confusing before you realize you’re not actually pregnant. With one positive test, your entire life will change.
