Sex facts

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No human pheromone has ever been identified

Smell matters to attraction. That is a different claim.

No human pheromone has ever been identified

Pheromones are well established in insects and in many mammals, and the compounds are known by name. In humans, no molecule has ever met the standard: a specific compound, produced by everyone, that reliably produces a specific response. The four candidates sold commercially for decades were tested properly in 2017 and had no effect.

What does hold up is less tidy and more interesting. In repeated studies people rate the scent of others as more pleasant when their immune-system genes differ from their own — a preference that would, on average, produce offspring with broader immunity.

Sources

Wedekind et al., Proceedings of the Royal Society B (1995); Hare et al., Royal Society Open Science (2017)

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General information, not medical advice. Anything persistent or painful belongs with a doctor, who has heard it before.