You can test PdG (pregnanediol glucuronide) at home using simple urine dip strips, similar to a pregnancy test. PdG is the form progesterone takes after your body processes it and sends it out through urine. Testing for it confirms whether ovulation actually occurred and whether your body produced enough progesterone afterward to support a potential pregnancy. The entire process takes a few minutes per day over a short window of your cycle.
What PdG Tells You That Other Tests Don’t
Standard ovulation predictor kits (OPKs) detect LH, the hormone that surges right before ovulation. But an LH surge doesn’t guarantee that ovulation followed or that your body produced adequate progesterone afterward. PdG testing picks up where OPKs leave off. It measures whether progesterone rose to a healthy level during the luteal phase, the roughly two-week stretch between ovulation and your next period.
A blood progesterone test does the same thing, but it captures a single snapshot on the day you visit the lab. PdG urine strips let you track levels across multiple days at home, which can reveal patterns a one-time blood draw would miss. Research published in Human Reproduction Open found a 0.95 correlation between urinary PdG and blood progesterone levels, meaning the urine measurement closely mirrors what a blood test would show.
What You Need to Get Started
Home PdG tests are sold as dip strips, either on their own or bundled with LH ovulation strips. The most widely available option is the Proov Predict and Confirm kit, which is FDA-cleared specifically as an aid for confirming ovulation. Premom also sells standalone PdG test strips. Both work the same way: you dip the strip in a urine sample, wait a few minutes, and read the result.
These strips are qualitative, not quantitative. They don’t give you a number. Instead, they turn positive or negative based on whether your PdG concentration has crossed a threshold of 5 micrograms per milliliter. Published studies have shown that this urine level corresponds to roughly 10 nanograms per milliliter of progesterone in blood, the standard clinical benchmark for confirming ovulation.
When and How to Test
Timing matters more than technique. The goal is to test during the mid-luteal phase, when progesterone (and therefore PdG) should be at its peak. If you’re also using LH strips, start PdG testing five days after your first positive LH result. That puts you right around day 7 post-ovulation, the classic window for checking progesterone. Continue testing daily for several days, typically through days 7, 8, 9, and 10 after your LH surge.
If you’re not tracking LH, most test kits include a cycle chart that estimates when to begin based on your average cycle length. The key is knowing roughly when you ovulated so you can target the right window.
Use first morning urine. It’s the most concentrated, giving you the most reliable reading. If mornings don’t work, test at the same time each day under similar conditions. Consistency matters more than perfection. Dip the strip into your urine sample for the time specified on the packaging (usually a few seconds), lay it flat, and read the result within the time window listed in the instructions.
Reading the Results
PdG strips can be counterintuitive if you’re used to pregnancy tests. On the Proov strip, one line means positive (PdG detected above the threshold), and two lines mean negative. Read the instructions for your specific brand carefully, because this is the opposite of what most people expect.
A single positive result on any testing day confirms that ovulation occurred. But the real value comes from testing across multiple days to see the pattern.
What Your Results Mean
A healthy luteal phase shows PdG levels rising after ovulation and staying elevated for several days. If your strips are positive on days 7 through 10 post-ovulation, that’s a strong signal that your body produced and sustained adequate progesterone.
Abnormal patterns are more nuanced. Research in Frontiers in Public Health identified several types of luteal phase problems that PdG tracking can help reveal:
- Low mid-luteal PdG: Your levels never reach the threshold. This suggests progesterone production was insufficient after ovulation.
- Normal then early drop: PdG starts strong but falls off before the end of the luteal phase. This pattern is a recognized sign of luteal phase abnormality and could affect the ability to sustain an early pregnancy.
- Delayed rise: PdG takes longer than expected to reach adequate levels after ovulation, which may indicate sluggish corpus luteum function.
- Short luteal phase: The entire window of elevated PdG is compressed, often less than 10 days between ovulation and the next period.
If your strips remain negative throughout the testing window, ovulation may not have occurred that cycle, or progesterone production was too low to register. A single cycle with low PdG isn’t necessarily a problem. Occasional anovulatory cycles happen to most people. But if you see the same pattern across two or three cycles, that information is worth bringing to a fertility specialist or your OB-GYN.
Tips for More Reliable Results
Hydration affects urine concentration. If you drink a large amount of water before bed, your first morning urine may be diluted enough to produce a false negative. Aim for normal hydration rather than overhydrating the night before testing.
Store your strips at room temperature and check the expiration date. Expired or heat-damaged strips can give unreliable readings. If a result looks ambiguous (a faint line that’s hard to interpret), some app-connected tests like Proov let you scan the strip with your phone for a more objective read.
Testing over multiple consecutive days is more informative than a single test. One positive strip confirms ovulation happened, but tracking days 7 through 10 reveals whether progesterone stayed elevated long enough. That sustained rise is what distinguishes a strong luteal phase from one that peaks and drops too early.
How Accurate Home PdG Tests Are
The Proov PdG test is FDA-cleared as a Class I diagnostic device for confirming ovulation, the same regulatory category as most home pregnancy tests. Its clinical claim is limited to ovulation confirmation, not diagnosing fertility conditions or predicting pregnancy success.
The correlation between urinary PdG and blood progesterone is strong (R² of 0.95), so the biology behind the test is sound. The main limitation is that dip strips give you a yes-or-no answer at a fixed threshold rather than a precise number. If your progesterone is hovering just below 10 ng/ml in blood, the strip may read negative even though your levels aren’t dramatically low. For borderline cases, a timed blood draw ordered by your doctor provides more granular data.
That said, for most people tracking ovulation at home, the qualitative positive-or-negative format answers the practical question: did I ovulate, and did my body respond with enough progesterone? For that purpose, home PdG strips are a reliable and accessible tool that didn’t exist for consumers until recently.