UTI Test At Home: Testing Options and Sample Collection Tips

Completing a UTI test at home can seem like a convenient approach. I mean, seriously, if you’re chained to a toilet, in pain, the last thing you want to do is leave home to get a test elsewhere.

Before you jump into ordering a home UTI test there are some important things you need to know.

The type of UTI test you choose can mean the difference between getting well or continuing to experience UTI symptoms. So we’ll cover 4 popular options for UTI tests at home, and let you decide.

We’ve also created a free download that provides a breakdown of the different types of testing. Provide the email address at which you’d like to receive the download, at the end of this article. Jump straight to download.

Jump To Section:

• Four UTI test at home options for you to consider >>>>
• Strips to conduct a UTI test at home >>>>
• Standard urine culture at home test >>>>
• Advanced UTI test methods >>>>
• How to collect a home UTI test sample like a pro >>>>

One obvious consideration for a UTI test at home, is that most options do not provide instantaneous results.

They typically involve collecting a urine sample, and shipping it or delivering it by hand. Clearly, if you’re taking care of that part yourself it’s not technically a UTI test at home.

Having said that, it can still be a lot more comfortable to do it this way, than to wait around in a clinic, particularly given that it’s better not to take anything to relieve your symptoms until you’ve provided a urine sample.

Home UTI testing options allow you to collect a sample quickly, then get straight to your pain relief routine, whatever that may be.

There are two standard ways to conduct a UTI test at home:

1. A rapid dipstick strip test, which can be done as a UTI test at home, or by your medical practitioner
2. A urine culture, where your sample is sent to a lab and is tested over the course of 24-48 hours.

And then there are other, more advanced testing methods that use DNA sequencing and also involve shipping a sample:

3. Next Generation Sequencing: PCR and 16s technology and whole genome sequencing

How Accurate Are Standard UTI Testing Methods?

Standard UTI tests include UTI test strips and urine culture. Despite being the global standards for UTI testing since the 1980s and 1950s respectively, both of these tests are extremely inaccurate.

We’ve covered UTI test inaccuracies in more detail, and it’s a good idea to brush up on the topic before your next test.

Accuracy Of Standard UTI Tests

An inaccurate UTI test can result in no treatment, or incorrect treatment, which can lead to prolonged or indefinite symptoms. Nobody wants that.

In fact, 26-44% of females will experience a recurrence of their first UTI. In this 26-44% it is likely the initial treatment failed, and this may be due to the type of test used.

It gets worse. Evidence suggests that with each recurrence of UTI, another recurrence becomes more likely.

The more UTIs you have, the more likely you are to get another.

Consider this before reaching for a UTI test at home. It may not help you, and it may actually put you in a worse position.

So why don’t the standard UTI test methods provide the answers you need?

First, let’s take a quick look at those urine test strips you can use at home (or at the doctor’s office).

UTI home test strips are commonly used as a quick way to identify the presence of a urinary tract infection. The aim of at home UTI test strips is to allow you to perform a quick urine test and find out within minutes whether you have an infection, and whether it is bacterial.

How Do At Home UTI Test Strips Work?

Let’s take a look at what the little colored boxes on a home UTI test strip mean.

Bear in mind that some at home UTI test strips contain only two of the indicators listed below.

What Home UTI Strip Test Indicators Mean

Indicator	Why It’s Used
pH Level	If your urine pH is outside the normal range of 5-7, there could be an issue, or your urine pH may have been temporarily altered by something you ate or drank.
Protein	Protein in the urine (proteinuria) can indicate kidney disease or other health issues, but it can also be caused by: - Urinary tract infection - Dehydration - Stress or strenuous exercise - Exposure to extreme cold - Fever
Sugar	The most common cause of sugar in the urine is diabetes, but it can also indicate other rare health conditions.
Ketone	Ketones in the urine can also be caused by diabetes, but can also be a result of a state of ketosis, where the body burns fat instead of sugar for fuel.
Bilirubin	Bilirubin in the urine may be an early indicator of liver damage, however, this indicator is known to be highly inaccurate.
Urobilinogen	Urobilinogen is a by-product of Bilirubin production and may indicate issues with the liver, among other health issues.
Nitrite	Some bacteria that cause UTIs make an enzyme that changes urinary nitrates into nitrites. So if the strip is positive for nitrites, the conclusion is that you have a bacterial UTI. Note that many bacteria do not create nitrites in your urine.
Red blood cells (erythrocytes)	Blood can appear in urine due to strenuous exercise, but generally, blood in the urine is taken to be a sign of infection, inflammation, disease, or injury to the urinary tract.
White blood cells (leukocytes esterase)	A positive strip result for white blood cells in your urine indicates an infection in your urinary tract, or possibly, kidney disease.

Why Is My UTI Test At Home Negative When I Feel Like I Have A UTI?

It’s a great question, and one we hear a lot. And there’s a good answer:

Studies have shown that home UTI test strips cannot be used to rule out infection.

If you do a UTI test at home, and it indicates you don’t have an infection despite your symptoms, you have good reason to question the test itself.

Regardless of how many indicators are on the UTI test strip, it is not accurate.

Given the inaccuracy of home UTI test strips, particularly when it comes out negative, your symptoms may be a better indicator of a UTI.

This also applies to the UTI test strips used in clinics and hospitals. Despite what you may have been told, there is no such thing as an accurate UTI test strip.

“My urine was visibly cloudy and it burned when I went to pee. My doctor used a UTI test strip in my urine sample and said everything on the test strip was normal. I was told I didn’t have an infection even though I’ve had UTIs before and I know exactly what they feel like.”

Every brand of home UTI test works on the principles laid out above, and they all have the same limitations.

Should You Use Strips To Conduct A UTI Test At Home?

Hopefully, after reading the above, you already know how unhelpful a UTI test at home could be. To sum it all up:

• Studies show that UTI test strips may only be reliable about 30% of the time.
• Other studies have bluntly concluded that UTI test strips should be abandoned as a tool for the diagnosis of UTIs in patients with lower urinary tract symptoms.
• Given the low accuracy of UTI test strips, if the results are negative but you have UTI symptoms, it would generally be recommended that you pursue more accurate testing.

Unfortunately, official guidelines allow for the use of test strips in diagnosing UTIs, so their use is extremely widespread, both at home and in clinical settings.

So what are your other options for UTI testing at home?

Many labs will allow you to ship a urine sample from home, for a standard urine culture test. You may have organized this by ordering a UTI test kit online, or your doctor may have provided a kit in advance.

It can take a week or so to get results using this method, depending on the provider.

The process behind urine culture testing is easy enough to understand.

First, you provide a mid-stream urine (MSU) sample – also known as a clean-catch sample. See further down for instructions on how to collect a urine sample at home, for testing.

Your urine sample is sent to a lab, and (in its simplest form) this is what happens:

Step One	A very small amount of your urine is placed on a plate with agar - a substance that encourages bacteria and fungi to grow.
Step Two	The plate is tightly sealed and placed in an incubator at body temperature.
Step Three	Any bacteria or fungi that are present are allowed to grow into small, circular colonies over the next 24-48 hours.
Step Four	If there is little or no growth, the test is considered negative.
Step Five	If there is growth, samples will be taken from each significant type of bacterial colony. A gram stain test will be done, which helps to differentiate between types of bacteria.
Step Six	Further testing is performed to identify specific types of bacteria present, then a susceptibility test is done to find out which antibiotic will be the most effective.
Step Seven	Results are forwarded to your doctor, or directly to you, showing which organism was found, in what concentration, and how it should be treated.
Step Eight	Your doctor prescribes you the recommended antibiotic or antifungal to treat the infection.

This might sound logical, but there are some very important flaws which mean…

Standard urine culture testing is inaccurate in up to 50% of cases. The main test we rely on to shed light on UTIs leaves 1 in 2 females in the dark.

There are 8 main reasons your UTI test may be negative, despite your symptoms. We’ve explained this further (just follow the above link), along with information you can share with your doctor to discuss your testing options.

Standard Urine Culture Testing Tips

Although we know standard UTI testing is inaccurate, some individuals do find an answer.

“I got this UTI that just would not go away. After a few rounds of antibiotics my doctor had my urine tested. The results showed the cause of my UTI was a different bacteria than she first suspected. She gave me a different antibiotic and it worked!”

Standard UTI testing may be a road you wish to go down, particularly if you have not had your urine tested and you get acute UTI symptoms regularly.

Given the issues with UTI testing (which we’ve described in our UTI Test section), we thought we’d provide a few tips below on increasing the likelihood of getting an accurate result with standard urine testing, should you choose to pursue it.

While we don’t usually recommend using techniques that have been shown to be so flawed, there are very few options for UTI testing in most regions. So instead of dismissing it completely, we’ll discuss below how you can get the most out of what’s available.

The Issues With Standard UTI Testing You May Be Able to Minimize

As we covered in our testing section, one of the issues with the standard urine culture test is that the threshold for bacteria concentration in the urine is too high to catch many infections.

While many labs still use the threshold of a minimum colony forming unit (CFU) count of 10⁵ per milliliter of cultured urine, females with symptomatic UTIs may present with CFU counts as low as 10²/mL. For this reason, a number of recent guidelines recommend decreasing the threshold to 10³/mL.

In plain language, a cut off point of 10⁵ CFU/mL means your cultured urine sample could contain 90,000 colony forming units of bacteria per milliliter, but because the threshold is set at 100,000 (10⁵), your test result will be reported as negative.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you should accept that answer.

“There’s an old expression, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck. It's gotta be a duck. And so to have somebody who has pain, urgency, frequency and burning, and yet they're told they don't have an infection because a urine culture was negative, who do you believe? Are you treating a lab result? Or are you treating a person?” Ruth Kriz, APRN

Getting back to standard urine testing… On top of the issues with the CFU threshold, some guidelines suggest the standard incubation time of 24-48 hours may be insufficient to grow all pathogens present in a urine sample.

Certain types of bacteria or fungi may be much slower growing, and will only appear in significant concentrations after 3-5 days. It is also believed that some pathogens may never grow on an agar plate, which is the standard technique used for UTI testing.

Changes To Request For A Standard Urine Culture Test

If you are unable to access more accurate UTI testing methods, and choose to have your urine cultured via the standard UTI testing method, you can request:

1. Decrease the colony forming units (CFU) threshold from 10⁵ to 10³ or 10² .
2. Ensure a susceptibility test is completed if your test is positive for bacteria or yeast even at lower levels. This should be done automatically, and is essential to identify which antibiotic or anti-yeast treatment should be prescribed.
3. Lengthen the incubation period, to encourage the growth of more types of pathogens.

These changes aren’t always possible, so you should ask your doctor about it, or request it directly at a lab if you test independently.

In most US states, you have the right to pursue UTI testing independently, and the right to request your lab test results without seeing a doctor first. This is not the case in all countries.

If your test is negative, you can discuss this with your doctor or lab. It may make sense to conduct another test at a different time of day (see our tips below), or to test for different pathogens that could be causing your symptoms.

Given the inaccuracies of standard UTI testing, a negative result may also be a prompt to pursue more accurate testing methods, like those below.