[Determination of HCG excretion for diagnosis of trophoblast vitality and assessment of age of early pregnancy (author's transl)].

A convenient technique for quantitative determination of human chorionic gonadotrophin in urine is described in this paper, Gravimun test kit reagents are used to establish inhibition of haemagglutination, using in glass tubes one tenth (Gravimun) or one fifteenth (Gravimun II) of the amounts of reagents which would be required for the original test. Erythrocytes undergo sedimentation as two longitudinal stripes in parallel on the bottom of the tubes. The spacing between them is taken as the measure of the HCG quantity added to the system and related to a specially prepared standard curve. The Second International Standard of HCG for Bioassay is used for comparison. - Relation c = t3 (c = HCG concentration, IU/L; t = days from nidation, 20 days from last menstruation) was established for this period of time from values which had been recorded from 500 normal early pregnancies up to the tenth week. That relation can be used as a rule of thumb by which to determine age of pregnancy or to calculate expected average HCG excretion up to the tenth week of pregnancy.