Just like in the animal kingdom, it looks like human beings are also able to sniff out healthy partners. The recent research giving credence to this theory is published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Certain sexually transmitted diseases appear to be accompanied by an odour, which seems to have been detected by women in a small clinical trial.

34 men participated in the Russian study at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics. 16 men were healthy and 13 of them were infected with gonorrhoea. 5 men had been diagnosed with the infection but had since taken treatment to get rid of it. All of the men wore cotton pads under their armpits beneath a tight t-shirt and worked up a sweat over the course of an hour. The women later smelled the pads, assessing how attractive or not the odours were. Women disliked over one third of the odours however over half of the samples from infected men were described as ‘putrid’ by the women.

It has been known for a long time that female mice and rats are not attracted to the scent of others that are infected with disease. The research according to the study’s author concludes that the unpleasant body odours of men who are infected can reduce the likelihood of a dangerous partnering. We would caution that this study was based on a small number of participants so we do not believe that any scientific conclusion can be drawn from this without further investigation.