A serious illness can go undetected – 2024-04-14 13:08:48

Home tests can be found both for diagnosing diseases and for evaluating a woman’s most fertile period. Adobe Stock / AOP

Home tests can be misleading, they can add unnecessary worries or they can lull you into undue concern.

Clinical chemistry specialist Kristina Hotakainen writes about the use of self-testing and home tests in an article in the Health Library.

According to Hotakainen, factors related to sampling and sample quality pose a significant risk to the reliability of home tests.

A home test can also give a false positive or false negative result.

Hotakainen considers that wrong conclusions are drawn based on a home test and a possible illness is not properly diagnosed as a direct health risk.

Interpretation difficult

If the home test gives the result as a certain color line, interpreting the color can be quite difficult even for a professional.

According to Hotakainen, for example, evaluating the strength of the color reaction in the vitamin D test is very demanding and in practice also very open to interpretation.

According to Hotakainen, there is a home test on the market that promises to provide information about the vitamin D level from a DNA analysis of the cheek mucosa. However, the DNA test cannot be used directly to evaluate the serum vitamin D level.

According to Hotakainen, some ferritin tests are misleadingly described as anemia tests. Even if the ferritin level seems normal according to the test, it does not mean that there is no disease.

From uncertain to false

According to the article, the PSA home test result does not rule out cancer when negative, nor does it definitely indicate cancer when positive.

According to Hotakainen, a normal result from a CRP home test does not exclude a serious disease.

In Hotakainen’s opinion, it would not necessarily make sense to do a home test for borreliosis, which is based solely on the detection of antibodies of the IgM class.

Hotakainen suspects that the result of a chlamydia home test performed on the mucous membrane with a swab is uncertain simply because of the sampling method.

According to Hotakainen, there are also good home tests. They include, among other things, pregnancy tests.

In the instructions for use of the home test, there is often a call to seek doctor’s appointments and laboratory tests, regardless of the final result of the test.