Will home pregnancy tests detect testicular cancer? Fact Check

Messages online claim that a simple home pregnancy test can detect testicular cancer in men.

TRUE, BUT LACKING CONTEXT

Such messages appear to have started to spread after a male Reddit user in 2012 posted a “rage meme” telling the story of how he used an ex-girlfriend’s pregnancy test, only to comically discover the test reported that he was pregnant.

Another user soon posted that he should get checked out for testicular cancer. Soon after, it was revealed that the user had gone to a doctor to discover a treatable tumour on one of the testes that was subsequently removed.

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This story posted by a guy on Reddit really amazed me. Basically he was in his bathroom one day and found his ex girlfriends pregnancy test kit. For a bit of a laugh he decided to pee on it. To his utter shock and surprise, the results came up with 2 lines as per the image below. This as we all know basically means he is pregnant right? Well obviously he is not pregnant but he thought it was really funny anyway.
He took to Reddit where he posted the picture. In the comments someone said “if this is true, you should check yourself for testicular cancer” and that he needed to get to his GP as soon as possible. It was lucky this chain of events happened as when his GP checked him over, it turned out that he had testicular cancer. He was fortunate enough to catch it in the early stages.
So what is going on here? Well the pregnancy test is actually looking for something called Human chorionic gonadotropin HCG . This is produced in the placenta of a woman and is thus a good test of pregnancy. It turns out that HCG is also produced by men who suffer from testicular cancer.

The story itself is certainly feasible, since pregnancy tests do indeed look for a hormone called Human chorionic gonadotropin, abbreviated to HCG. This is a hormone produced by the placenta during pregnancy, and as such is often used by home pregnancy tests.

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However it is very important to note that pregnancy tests are not a reliable way of detecting testicular cancer, since many types of cancerous conditions will not produce the HCG hormone, or at least at the required levels to be picked up by a pregnancy test. Additionally, as Dr. Ted Gansler tells the American Cancer Society’s media relations team, many non-cancerous conditions can produce HCG, leading to false positive results.

“At the time of diagnosis, only a small minority of men with testicular cancer have HCG levels high enough to be detected by a home urine pregnancy test. More sensitive blood tests for HCG with a lower cutoff level could detect a somewhat higher percentage, but several non-cancerous conditions can cause false positive results. Current evidence does not indicate that screening the general population of men with a urine test for HCG (or with urine or blood tests for any other tumor marker) can find testicular cancer early enough to reduce testicular cancer death rates.”

As such, while the story concerning the Reddit user may very well be true, it is not recommended to spread any advice that states or implies that using such a pregnancy test is a sufficient method of gaging whether one has testicular cancer.

Relying on such an unreliable method may lead to men not seeking potentially life-saving medical treatment when they do indeed have testicular cancer.

More reliable methods of determining whether you have testicular cancer and other useful information can be found here. If you’re in doubt or have any questions, it is important that you arrange to see your doctor.