Patient says pregnancy test was wrong

Brittany Gould received a gift bag for new mothers when she went to a clinic to confirm she was pregnant, and then a few minutes later received a blood test result from Theranos which incorrectly stated that she was pregnant. ‘she was having a miscarriage, Gould said Tuesday during the criminal fraud trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth. Holmes.

Gould was the first of 11 patients the prosecution said it planned to call to testify at Holmes’ trial on a dozen counts.

Gould, from Arizona, was 24 when a home pregnancy test showed a positive result and she went to Walgreens for a Theranos test to measure a hormone that allows healthcare professionals to confirm and to monitor pregnancies, she said. Gould, a medical assistant, said she attended a presentation at her own clinic by a representative from Theranos and was impressed with what she saw as the low cost and convenience of finger blood tests from the Palo Alto startup. Having a high insurance deductible and looking to keep costs down, she chose Theranos for her own HCG hormone test in late 2014, she told jurors at the U.S. District Court in San Jose.

Holmes, a Stanford University dropout who founded blood testing startup Palo Alto in 2003 at the age of 19, is accused of allegedly embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars and investors. defrauding doctors and patients by falsely claiming that the company’s machines could perform a full range of tests using just a few drops of blood. She and her co-accused, former company chairman Sunny Balwani, denied the allegations.

Gould had previously miscarried three times when her home test showed she was pregnant, jurors said. She testified that her Theranos results came to her when she met her nurse practitioner at another clinic where Gould was not employed. They showed her HCG levels to drop dramatically, an indication that she was having a miscarriage, she testified. She and the nurse practitioner discussed the termination of the pregnancy and whether she needed follow-up tests, she said.

Prosecutor John Bostic showed the jury a series of five test results Gould received. The first came from lab giant Quest, the next two from Theranos, and the last two from Quest. Although Quest’s results indicated a healthy pregnancy, Theranos ‘second result showed a huge drop in HCG levels compared to Theranos’ first test, her nurse practitioner, Audra Zachman, said earlier Tuesday. “I remember communicating to Brittany that it looked like it was an unviable pregnancy, which would make it her fourth loss,” Zachman told the jury.

When Zachman complained to Theranos about the results, the company blamed a human data entry error and sent an “odd” corrected result that moved a decimal point but still raised concerns about Gould’s pregnancy, Zachman said. Jurors saw a letter from Theranos, signed by Holmes’ brother and Theranos employee, Christian Holmes, apologizing for the original inaccuracy, saying “these errors are extremely rare”.

Quest’s last two tests showed normal results, Zachman said, and Gould gave birth to a healthy daughter.

In cross-examination, Zachman admitted that his clinic later accepted Theranos ‘offer to collaborate on a research study in 2015. Holmes’ attorney, Katie Trefz, asked Zachman if she remembered that. after the study, her clinic began referring patients for Theranos testing, but Zachman said she herself had not referred anyone. Trefz asked if Zachman knew that his clinic had received the results of nearly 20,000 orders for Theranos tests from September 2014 to October 2016, and Zachman said no.