First ever saliva pregnancy test to hit shops – and it’s 95% accurate

FOR decades women have taken a discreet visit to the bathroom to carry out a ‘pee on a stick’ pregnancy test.

In fact, urine has been used to determine if a woman is expecting for more than 3,000 years.

But the method could soon become obsolete – thanks to scientists who have finally cracked the secret of how to test for pregnancy using saliva alone.

The ‘SaliStick’, the world’s first saliva-based pregnancy test, is set to go on sale in High Street shops next year, costing about £8.

Last night Guy Krief, co-founder of Israel-based maker Salignostics, said it would enable couples to go through the experience of taking a pregnancy test together for the first time.

He added: ‘The concept is so modern and so different to the current way of doing things.’

First, the woman places the foamtipped stick in her mouth for a few moments, much as one would do with a thermometer.

Then she transfers it to a plastic tube, where a biochemical reaction takes place, with a result given in less than ten minutes.

Mr Krief said surveys indicated the method would be popular, with 70 per cent of women saying they would opt for a saliva-based pregnancy test compared with 16 per cent who would prefer to stick with the urine-based approach.

One woman who used the SaliStick in trials said it was a ‘joy’ to be able to do the test with her partner present, adding: ‘I didn’t like the idea of having to go to the toilet or bathroom. Urine pregnancy tests can be fiddly and messy.’

Mr Krief said: ‘It’s a lovely idea if you’re trying for a baby to be able to do the test in front of your partner – and hopefully celebrate the goods news together immediately.’

SaliStick can be used to test for pregnancy from the first day of a missed period.

A trial showed that it identified pregnancies 95 per cent of the time, while giving a false positive reading on fewer than three in 100 occasions. This makes it slightly less precise than urine-based tests — the popular Clearblue brand claims to be over 99 per cent accurate.

However, Mr Krief said they expected to refine their product’s accuracy still further.

Both urine and saliva-based tests work by identifying the presence of human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG, a hormone specific to pregnancy which helps prepare the uterus for the developing embryo.

The saliva test is the latest method in the long – and bizarre – history of divining pregnancy. Ancient Egyptians recommended urinating over barley and wheat seeds, according to a papyrus text dating from 1350 BC.

If the barley seeds germinated it was meant to herald a boy; wheat a girl. If neither sprouted, the woman was not pregnant.

Scientist believe that there might have been a grain of truth in what might be dismissed as an old wives’ tale: a pregnant woman’s urine contains high levels of various hormones which could help to trigger germination.

In the 1920s, reliable tests were devised, although these involved injecting the woman’s urine into a range of small animals – mice, rabbits and frogs.

If hCG was present, it would make them ovulate.

On-the-shelf tests appeared in the 1970s but were convoluted, with women having to combine their urine with dried sheep’s blood.