Sex pheromone* spray boosts senior romance

19:00 26 January 2005

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition

Andy Coghlan

A mystery chemical that young women deploy as a sex attractant pheromone seems to work for post-menopausal women too.

Joan Friebely of Harvard University, US, and Susan Rako, a private physician in Newton, Massachusetts, US, have studied 44 post-menopausal women. Half added Athena Pheromone 10:13, originally isolated from a woman's armpit sweat, to their perfume while half added a dummy compound. Neither the women nor the researchers knew who was in each group until the results were in.

In diaries kept by the women for six weeks, 41% of pheromone users reported more petting, kissing and affection with partners compared with 14% receiving the placebo. Overall, 68% of pheromone users reported increases in at least one of four "intimate socio-sexual behaviours" such as formal dates and sex, as against 41% on the placebo.

But the pheromone's discoverer, biologist Winnifred Cutler, is keeping its identity secret until patents have been granted to Cutler's Athena Institute for Women's Wellness Research in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania, US. "It's still a mystery substance being applied to individuals at unknown concentrations," says George Preti of the Monell Chemical Senses Centre in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Friebely and Rako say they have no financial interest in the product.

Journal reference: The Journal of Sex Research (vol 41, p 372)

JL(I'll believe it when I smell it!)

*a chemical substance that is produced by an animal and serves especially as a stimulus to other individuals of the same species for one or more behavioral responses -- often sexual.