Women are seeing lots of ads for home menopause tests.
These ads encourage testing...to determine if mood swings and other symptoms are due to declining hormones.
Urine tests (Menocheck, RU25 Plus Menopause Test, etc) cost about $20 and can be done at home...similar to a home pregnancy test.
These tests measure Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH).
Elevated FSH levels can indicate menopause...but FSH alone is NOT reliable for diagnosing menopause.
Advise women to see their physician instead for a more complete evaluation of potential menopausal symptoms.
Saliva tests (Female Check, etc) are popular on the Internet. They test for estrogen, progesterone, testosterone and other hormones.
These test kits cost $60 and up. Women collect the saliva at home and mail the sample to a lab for testing.
These tests are promoted to help women determine if they need hormone therapy...and to customize their doses.
But saliva tests aren't very reliable and may not correlate with serum hormone levels.
Tell women there's no need for these tests.
Advise women that hormone therapy is used to treat SYMPTOMS... not test results.
Explain that if they have symptoms, they may need treatment despite what the test says. And if they have NO symptoms, they sure don't need treatment, even if the test says they're menopausal.
Some women want the test to see if they can stop their contraceptive. Explain that the hormones in oral contraceptives can foul up the results of menopause tests.
J Am Pharm Assoc 2003;43:724. Endocrine Pract 1999;5:355.