HealthGuide Med & Diagnostic Lab Services

What tests are used to diagnose diabetes and prediabetes? Health care professionals most often use the fasting plasma glucose (FPG) test or the A1C test to diagnose diabetes. In some cases, they may use a random plasma glucose (RPG) test. Fasting plasma glucose (FPG) test The FPG blood test measures your blood glucose level at a single point in time. For the most reliable results, it is best to have this test in the morning, after you fast for at least 8 hours. Fasting means having nothing to eat or drink except sips of water. A1C test The  A1C test  is a blood test that provides your average levels of blood glucose over the past 3 months. Other names for the A1C test are hemoglobin A1C, HbA1C, glycated hemoglobin, and glycosylated hemoglobin test. You can eat and drink before this test. When it comes to using the A1C to diagnose diabetes, your doctor will consider factors such as your age and whether you have  anemia   NIH external link  or another problem with...

Ovulation testing is something you might consider if you are trying to get pregnant. Home ovulation test kits detect changes in the levels of hormones that happen during a woman’s menstrual cycle, indicating when you are likely to ovulate. This can help you to work out the best times to try to conceive. Ovulation testing is also sometimes recommended by doctors if you are having trouble getting pregnant. If this is the case, blood tests are used to test whether or not you are ovulating. What is ovulation? Ovulation is part of the normal menstruation cycle, and happens about 14 days before a woman gets her period. It is the release of an egg (ovum) from an ovary; sometimes more than one egg is released from the ovaries. Once an egg has been released, it enters one of the fallopian tubes and travels towards the uterus (womb). The odds of getting pregnant are highest when there are live sperm in the fallopian tubes at the time of ovulation. Culled from mydr.com.au

Pregnancy tests check for the presence of the pregnancy hormone, human chorionic gonadotrophin (HCG), in your urine. Your body begins to produce HCG after you conceive. If you get a positive test result on the first day of your missed period, it's probably about 2 weeks since you conceived. You can use the  pregnancy due date calculator to work out when your baby is due. More sensitive tests may be able to confirm that you're pregnant from as early as around 8 days after conception. Some pregnancy tests can give an estimation of when you might have conceived based on the level of HCG in your urine. Culled from nhs

Culled from Wikipedia.org Testing is performed to help diagnose malaria, to monitor for relapses, and to determine drug susceptibility of the  parasite  causing the infection. Thick and thin blood smears Diagnosis of malaria involves performing  blood smears . For a blood smear, a drop of blood is applied to and spread onto a glass slide. It is then treated with a special stain and examined under a microscope for the morphology of infected blood cells and the parasite. Typically, two thick smears and two thin smears are prepared. These tests are currently the "gold standard" for malaria detection and identification. They require examination by a trained and experienced laboratorian. The number of malaria parasites present in the blood at a given time fluctuates. Therefore, if no parasites are seen on the initial set of smears and the health practitioner still suspects malaria, then additional blood samples will be obtained to be tested. The samples may be collected at 8 t...