cEasy, intuitive and delivering results in minutes, rapid health and wellness tests are popping up on pharmacy shelves across Australia. There are blood skin tests for vitamin D and iron levels, urine tests for perimenopause and menopause, and several health kits that cover urinary tract infections and a cocktail of metrics like glucose, ketones, and pH.
Most range from $5 to $30, which is cheaper than a private GP consultation fee. You don’t need to talk to a doctor or medical professional to buy one (or a whole basket). So can a urine stick test confirm if I’m perimenopausal? Will low ferritin (iron stores) solve the mystery of my eternal fatigue? And, if they work, does a positive result simply mean more clinical trials?
Patty Shea, a senior lecturer in public health at the University of Wollongong and co-author of an Australian study on direct-to-consumer testing, says there are hundreds of self-testing kits on the market. Some offer “results in minutes,” while others require you to send a hair, saliva, or blood sample to a lab for analysis.
Shea says there are many aspects to home test kits, especially where they can “help people who have social or geographic barriers to access health care”.
“Some people don’t feel like going to the doctor as soon as possible. It’s hard to go to the doctor,” he says. But – and this is a big caveat – most “home test kits are not as accurate as lab tests”. The chances of false positives or false negatives are “very high”, which may lead to further testing, false positives or confusion.
“You should only get tested if you need to,” Shay says. There is a risk of “the wrong test or unnecessary testing for the wrong consumer,” he says. A thorough understanding of the conditions and your medical history is important to interpreting the results, which is why he would be wary of most health and wellness tests on the market.
He says wellness has also become about “optimizing” oneself, which is leading to an “over-commercialized” self-examination ecosystem.
Professor Martha Hickey, director of the Women’s Gynecology Research Center at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne, says some rapid tests, including pregnancy, sexual health tests and Covid tests, are very reliable. Shay agrees.
However, Shay believes that others can be like “taking a stab in the dark”.
Perimenopause tests
Hickey says there’s no evidence that a urine FSH test, or any urine test, can predict when you’ll go into menopause. There are a number of reasons for this, he says. “One is that it’s a hormone that changes significantly throughout your cycle.”
The biggest predictor of perimenopause is age, he says, but the professor knows why there is a gold rush in menopause products.
“There’s been a huge explosion of direct-to-consumer products around women’s health care in general, but especially around menopause and fertility,” she says. “It’s very hard for women to make that move when there’s a gap in high-quality information that they can access.”
Rapid FSH tests, sold by several manufacturers in Australia, including V-Test Bio – the test we chose to photograph for its attractive packaging – measure follicle-stimulating hormone via a urine test. Hickey says that FSH in your blood can be detected in your urine, but it’s “not a reliable way to know if you’re in perimenopause”.
A VTest Bio spokesperson said the test “is not intended to diagnose perimenopause, but to provide an accessible indicator that hormone levels may be changing”. The word “perimenopause” does not appear on its bright pink box, but it is used in the instructions inside the package, on the chemical shelf labels and on the Bio Test Bio website.
A spokesperson for TerryWhite Chemmart, the pharmacy where we purchased the FSH test, says that their use of “perimenopause” to describe the test “is to help consumers identify the conditions in which the product may be useful, especially given that ‘FSH’ is not a widely understood term”.
“For women experiencing symptoms such as irregular cycles, hot flashes or sleep disturbances, the test can provide additional information that may prompt a discussion with a healthcare professional,” says a WeTest Bio spokesperson. They say that all these at-home tests “empower people with accessible health insights in the privacy of their homes”.
“I don’t think these self-tests are powerful,” says Hickey. “To me, a test that doesn’t work—for what you fear—is a bad combination.”
A TerryWhite Chemmart spokesperson says the products are “positioned as a starting point, not an end point”.
“We know perimenopause is complex and cannot be diagnosed with a single test,” they say. They add that TerryWhite Chemmart’s trained pharmacists can provide guidance and refer patients to GP or other specialist care if appropriate.
The Australian Menopause Society has a free symptom score sheet for perimenopause and menopause that can be used in consultation with a doctor. “Testing FSH or AMH levels or serum oestradiol and progesterone are unnecessary tests in the diagnosis of menopause for most women,” says the Australian Menopause Society website.
Iron and vitamin D pinprick blood tests
Rapid tests to check ferritin (stored iron) levels or vitamin D are sold by several manufacturers, including TouchBio, whose tests are chosen for their colorful packaging. These are fingerstick blood tests, with cassettes that look like covid tests. The results are ready in 10 minutes, which is faster and more convenient than a referral for a blood test in a pathology practice.
Mazz Gencer, TouchBio’s general manager, says its Therapeutic Goods Administration-regulated tests are “designed only as primary screening tools”.
“For some people, an at-home test can provide an early signal that prompts them to take a particular health condition more seriously, seek medical advice, or have a more informed conversation with a health care professional.”
If you’re experiencing symptoms, Shea says, “The first thing you should do is go to the doctor. Get a full consultation first to understand the situation—it could be something else.”
“What these tests do is simply create more confusion and provide less meaningful and less actionable information—even if it’s accurate,” Shea says. “There is a huge fitness and wellness industry that runs these tests…I believe [they] Go ahead and buy supplements, and the problem with supplements is that the quality varies. Unlike the test kit, supplements are “also very expensive.”
TouchBeau’s Genser says its ferritin and vitamin D quick-releases undergo comprehensive evaluation before being released in Australia. “These products are not wellness tools; they are self-administered tests designed to support—not replace—professional medical guidance.
“Our guidelines … clearly state that abnormal or frequently abnormal results should be discussed with a physician or medical professional, and that these results should always be interpreted in the context of symptoms, medical history, and professional medical advice.”
Jenser agrees that laboratory testing remains the reference standard. The ferritin test says “an abnormal result by itself does not confirm iron deficiency anemia”. The benefit for consumers is “being able to diagnose a concern early, reflect on the results personally, and decide whether a GP consultation should be made sooner, rather than later.”
There are thousands of biomarkers you can test for in your body, Shea says. By “focusing on one biomarker, you’re not thinking about your body”.
Several health tests
In some cases, tests provide results for multiple parameters, including glucose, ketones, vitamin C, protein and nitrates. We sell the BioTest Multi Health and UTI Home Test, which is a urine strip test that provides results for 11 health concerns in 90 seconds. It retails for around $20, which seems like a steal for a wide spectrum of metrics.
“Well-designed tools like this can support early detection, which may lead to early intervention and better health outcomes,” says a WeTest Bio spokesperson. A UTI result “can help guide next steps or prioritize care, particularly when GP access is limited”.
“If it’s a simple and straightforward UTI, and can be treated with over-the-counter antibiotics, you don’t really need to get tested,” Shay says. “A test at home, especially a false positive or negative, will send you down the wrong path of treatment.
“My message to commercial companies is to be really clear about your product,” Shea says. “Who should buy it and when is it necessary to buy it?”
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