THE RAPID RAT TEST FOR PREGNANCY: THE OVARIAN HYPEREMIA RESPONSE AS A ROUTINE DIAGNOSTIC PROCEDURE*

Abstract

SEVERAL authors have described rapid tests for pregnancy based on the hyperemic response of the immature rat ovary to pregnancy urine gonadotropin. Salmon and associates (1) observed that ovarian hyperemia was produced within six hours following a subcutaneous injection of pregnancy urine and suggested this as a test for pregnancy. Kupperman, Greenblatt and Noback (2) reported that the duration of the test could be reduced to two hours provided the urine was injected intraperitoneally. The accuracy of the two-hour test (excluding observations in ectopicpregnancy) has recently been reported by Kupperman and Greenblatt (3) to be 99.5 per cent in a total of 752 tests. Bunde (4) using either the twohour test with intraperitoneal injections or the six-hour test with subcutaneous injections, obtained an accuracy of only 84.5 per cent in 108 tests. A test developed by Zondek, Sulman and Black (5) consists of two subcutaneous injections of pregnancy urine at an interval of one hour. The accuracy of this test was 69 per cent at two hours, 92.2 per cent at six hours and 99 per cent at twenty-four hours.