Siemens is proud to announce that – according to an independent research study – our CLINITEST® hCG pregnancy test, when performed on the CLINITEK Status® family of analyzers, had the highest detectability factor and analytical sensitivity when compared to Quidel QUICKVUE and four other point-of-care devices. The study also documents the importance of detecting hCG beta core fragments (βcf) in early pregnancy samples, since this is one of the most common hCG variants in urine, following intact hCG.

In an article published by Clinica Chimica Acta volume 406 (May 2009, 81-85) entitled, “Qualitative point-of-care and over-the-counter urine hCG devices differently detect the hCG variants of early pregnancy”, 12 different brands of hCG devices were tested for their ability to detect a number of different forms of hCG variants. Of the 6 professional point-of-care devices tested, Siemens CLINITEST hCG was shown to detect the lowest limits of hCG.

The professional point-of-care devices evaluated were:

• SureVue® Serum/Urine hCG-STAT (Fisher Scientific)
• CLINITEST hCG (Siemens)
• Quick-Vue® + One-Step hCG Combo (Quidel Corp.)
• Osom® Card Pregnancy Test (Genzyme Diagnostics)
• hCG Combo SP® (Cardinal Health)
• ICON® II HCG (Beckman Coulter)

According to the results, Siemens CLINITEST hCG test had the highest detectability factor and the greatest analytical sensitivity of the six professional point-of-care devices tested.¹