Which At-Home Tests Work Best?
Find out which tests are must-haves and which you can do without.
June 24, 2008 — -- Drugstore shelves are cluttered with a variety of at-home medical test kits. You can determine whether you're pregnant, find out your blood pressure and cholesterol level with kits available at almost any pharmacy.
Most of these home testing kits are approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily useful tests for you. "Good Morning America" medical contributor Dr. Marie Savard gives you the skinny on five at-home tests and their pros and cons. Learn which ones are must-haves and which you can skip.
C-Reactive Protein Test
The recent deaths of journalist Tim Russert and comedian George Carlin have spotlighted heart disease, and the CRP -- C-reactive protein -- test can be used to check for inflammation in the blood that can trigger a heart attack.
It's actually a simple, inexpensive blood test. It comes back as either low, middle range or high risk. When it's abnormal, it doesn't mean it's a hundred percent sign of heart disease, but it's been highly linked to people and heart attacks.
So it's a marker for inflammation, and we now know that the most common and typical cause of inflammation is related to heart disease. For women, it has predicted the risk of future heart attacks.
Blood Pressure Monitor
Cost: $35 and up
As we get older, 30 to 40 percent of the population develops high blood pressure. It is the most treatable condition we have.
Untreated, it leads to heart attacks, strokes, kidney disease. High blood pressure was devastating before there were medications to control it. The majority of people with high pressure either don't know they have it or they write it off, saying they were nervous in the doctor's office when he was taking their blood pressure.
Home blood pressure monitoring has been shown to ensure that people who have high blood pressure get the right treatment and get their blood pressure under control. You can't rely on the doctor taking your blood pressure once or twice a year. The kit starts at $35 and is simple to use. All you do is strap a cuff on your arm.
Pregnancy Test
If blood pressure tests are the most important, then pregnancy tests may be the most accurate.
The pregnancy test transformed women's health. It gave women the power to know when they were pregnant even before they missed their periods. It's virtually the same as what your doctor can do.
You have to make sure that you don't dilute your urine, or the test will turn negative. A critical thing is to follow the directions. Anytime you do a urine test for chemically sensitive hormone acids, the more concentrated your urine, the more likely it is that the test will be accurate.
Menopause Hormone Testing
Cost: About $15
This test definitely checks for the hormones that elevate with menopause, but the test does not tell you that you're definitively in menopause.
All a menopause test tells you is that the symptoms you're experiencing could possibly be the beginning of menopause.
Menopause is defined strictly by not having your period for 12 months. There's no other scientific way to diagnose it, believe it or not. The menopause test will help women who have had symptoms like hot flashes, and at least give a clue that they may be at least pre-menopausal. It's a helpful test, but it comes with many caveats.
Ovulation Prediction Test
Cost: About $20
As more and more women make decisions to delay bearing children, fertility becomes a bigger focus when they finally decide they want to start their families. Fertility declines as a woman ages, and it becomes important for these women to know and be assured that they still ovulate regularly.
This test itells women that. It also is important for women who -- regardless of their age -- just aren't getting pregnant in the first couple of tries.
The test gives women the ability to monitor whether they are ovulating, which gives their doctors information they can evaluate. It can help pinpoint when a woman is going to ovulate, since it detects a hormone that the body releases just before ovulation.