Comparing women’s preferences for different men’s body odour before and after they began taking the oral contraceptive pill.

 

MedWire News: Oral contraception may mask women’s natural ability to sense a compatible partner and consequently impair their fertility, research suggests.

Humans choose partners partly through their body odour, which can draw them to someone with a dissimilar genetic make-up, helping to maintain genetic diversity in their children. But oral contraception can affect our odour preferences, report Craig Roberts (University of Liverpool, UK) and colleagues.

Overriding women’s instinctive attraction to genetically different men could make it harder for them to conceive and raise their risk for miscarriage, the researchers explain.

Also, passing on a more homogeneous pool of genes may weaken their children’s immune system. 

For the study, the team asked 100 women about their preferences for six male odour samples drawn from a sample of 97 volunteers, before and after they started using oral contraception.

“The results showed that the preferences of women who began using the contraceptive pill shifted towards men with genetically similar odours,” said Roberts.

He added: “Not only could major histocompatibility complex-similarity in couples lead to fertility problems but it could ultimately lead to the breakdown of relationships when women stop using the contraceptive pill, as odour perception plays a significant role in maintaining attraction to partners.”

 

ORGYN.com