is it possible to get a false positive on a home pregnancy test?
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It's possible to have a positive pregnancy test even if you aren't technically pregnant. This is called a false positive. It's sometimes caused by a chemical pregnancy. A chemical pregnancy occurs if a fertilized egg, known as the embryo, is unable to implant, or grow, very early on.
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It's rare, but it does happen. A false-positive pregnancy test can be devastating—especially for women who have difficulty conceiving or who are actively trying to get pregnant. ... Thankfully, false-positive pregnancy tests are rare, but they can happen.
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False negative tests are common. In fact, many women get false negative tests before they get a positive. This is because the body's HCG levels have not yet risen sufficiently high to indicate that a woman is pregnant. In many cases, a woman will later get a positive test if she just waits a few days.
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Ironically, unusually high levels of hCG can cause the test to give a false negative result. A very rare cause of a false negative is if the hCG hormone in your body doesn't react with the anti-hCG chemicals in the pregnancy test.
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Chemical pregnancy It's possible to have a positive pregnancy test even if you aren't technically pregnant. This is called a false positive. It's sometimes caused by a chemical pregnancy. A chemical pregnancy occurs if a fertilized egg, known as the embryo, is unable to implant, or grow, very early on.
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False positives are rare. If you take a test and it's negative and then take another test a few days apart and it's positive, it's possible you are pregnant and just didn't have enough hormones in your urine when tested earlier.
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False positive results are incredibly rare, and only happen if you have recently been pregnant, you're on fertility medications containing hCG, or you have a rare medical condition that causes hCG to be present.
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False Negative Pregnancy Tests However, this is not always the case. False negative pregnancy tests do occur. In fact, it is possible to have a negative result on a pregnancy test and actually be pregnant.
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A false-positive result indicates a pregnancy even though there isn't one. Rarely, the test may detect abnormal, non-pregnancy tissue, which requires follow-up by a doctor. These results are rare because usually only pregnant women produce the hCG hormone. There's a higher risk of getting a false-negative result.
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This is known as a false-positive. A false-positive might happen if you had a pregnancy loss soon after the fertilized egg attached to your uterine lining (biochemical pregnancy) or you take a pregnancy test too soon after taking a fertility drug that contains HCG.
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Getting a true false positive – one where you were never pregnant in the first place – is incredibly rare. Pregnancy tests detect the hCG (human Chorionic Gonadotrophin) hormone in your body, which is only present when you're pregnant.
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If you are not pregnant, a false positive pregnancy test result is unlikely. The more likely explanation is that you had a chemical pregnancy (which produces enough hCG to turn a pregnancy test positive but miscarries shortly after) or a very early miscarriage.
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The top three reasons you may get a false positive are: You've recently been pregnant. You've been taking fertility medications that contain hCG. You have a very rare medical condition, like ovarian cysts, that produce hCG and turn your result positive.
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Some of the reasons of how can you get a false positive pregnancy test are common for urine or blood tests. Specifically, certain medications (as mentioned above), tumors, ovarian cancer, blood or protein in the urine and a multiple pregnancies cause the presence of high hCG levels in a woman.
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While false negatives are very common, a false positive – where a pregnancy test tells you you're pregnant when you aren't – is extremely rare. That's because there are very few circumstances when your body would produce hCG without being pregnant.
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A third reason for a false negative result on a pregnancy test is diluted urine. If you drink a lot of water, it will dilute the hCG in your urine, and could cause you to get a false negative.
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Birth control cannot give you a false positive or a false negative. At home pregnancy tests rely on a hormone called hCG to detect pregnancy. This hormone is not a component of any common birth control methods including the pill or IUD.