Although childless couples do have the option of trying to initiate conception in a Petri dish, many turn first to the ovulation test kit. They hope that the results provided by at least one use of that ovulation test kit will signal to them the optimal time for their love-making. The kit can tell a couple when a woman’s ovary has released an egg. If the egg were to touch a sperm within the following 36 hours, then conception could occur. The present-day test kit provides more reliable information than the old, traditional charting of the woman’s basal body temperature.
In the early 1970’s the creation of an ovulation test kit seemed like an impossible dream. At that time, there did exist a way to measure the amount of LH produced when a female patient released an egg from one of her ovaries into the adjoining fallopian tube. However, the acquisition of that measurement depended on the completion of a test known as a radioimmunoassay (RIA). Because an RIA required the use of a large piece of equipment, it seemed absurd to think about the development of an ovulation test kit.
For many years the medical community relied on the test developed by Dr. Rosalyn Sussman Yalow. She showed that isotopes could be used in the performance of an RIA, a test for proteins. She allowed the medical community to measure the level in blood and urine of antibodies and hormones. She helped medical doctors to learn more about the menstrual cycles of their female patients.
For over a decade women who wanted to learn more about their cycle had to take urine samples to the laboratory. The lab would measure the amount of hormone in the urine, and the woman’s doctor would use that measurement to determine the amount of LH in the woman’s system. When such measurements could be combined with the charting of her basal body temperature (BBT), then the doctor could estimate the amount of LH released during an LH surge. An LH surge would be followed by a rise in the BBT.
When physicians had to rely on laboratory equipment, then only a few patients sought the results of an RIA. Only a few patients requested the measurement of their LH levels. Women who desperately wanted children, women who could have used information about their LH levels, often hesitated to pursue the time and expense involved in the test process that was then available. More than one of those women must have dreamed about having some sort of ovulation test kit that she could use at home.
By the conclusion of the 1970’s, the medical community had found an alternate way to measure the hormone level in a sample of blood or urine. Like the RIA, this testing method relied on antibodies, but they were a new sort of antibody. They were monoclonal antibodies, and they could be detected using fluorescent chemicals. That development opened the door to the development of an ovulation test kit.
Detection of the LH level in a woman’s urine on longer required a large piece of equipment. Still, a woman could not be expected to have a way to view a fluorescent object easily at home. For that reason the evolution of the ovulation test kit passed through yet another stage. That was the development of a way to unveil chemiluminescence’s qualities in a test kit. Eventually the makers of home test kits found a way to do just that, and women then had a way to test their LH in the privacy of their own homes.