HEALTH

An increasing number of DIY health tests can be bought over the counter and online. But are they worth it?

by PATSY WESTCOTT

Walk into almost any pharmacy or big supermarket and home testing kits for everything from cholesterol to kidney function and even cancer now jostle for shelf space with cold remedies and vitamin supplements.

Boots and Tesco jumped on the self-test bandwagon earlier this year, selling kits costing as little as £10. This autumn, 5,200 independent pharmacies under the Numark umbrella launched a range of ten kits, including for bowel health, vitamin D and thyroid function.

Experts suggest our familiarity with testing for Covid has made us more receptive to these tests, and the worldwide market – worth £13 million in 2021 – is predicted to exceed £35 million by 2031. And of course, the trouble many of us face in seeing a GP can make it tempting to take matters into our own hands.

On the face of it, it seems like a good idea to know your cholesterol or be able to quash your worries about having bowel cancer by using a simple, at-home test. But it’s more complicated than that, say doctors. And anyway, who’s testing the tests? That’s the first problem. Many are of dubious quality, overplay their evidence base and are poorly regulated; numerous studies have found that many don’t live up to their claims.

‘There’s currently only a limited requirement for manufacturers to prove that at-home tests perform well for people who buy them off the shelf. And we don’t yet have the evidence for many that they actually improve health outcomes,’ says Oxford GP Dr Gail Hayward at the National Institute for Health and Care Research, who is working to develop better diagnostic tests for GP surgeries. ‘People could well be spending money on unnecessary tests, which result in them being sent for more invasive tests that they don’t need.’