Accumulating evidence suggests that men do not find body odours of human leucocyte antigen-dissimilar women more attractive

Lobmaier, Janek S.; Fischbacher, Urs; Probst, Fabian; Wirthmüller, Urs; Knoch, Daria

doi:10.1098/rspb.2018.0566

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 20 publications

(31 reference statements)

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“…MHC-related odours may be learnt and used to avoid kin matings in mice. The evidence for MHC (HLA) influences on mate choice in humans may not be as clear as once thought (Havlicek this volume;Lobmaier et al 2018).…”

Section: (A)mentioning

confidence: 98%

Reproducible research into human semiochemical cues and pheromones: learning from psychology’s renaissance

Wyatt

2019

Preprint

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As with other mammals, smell in the form of semiochemicals is likely to influence the behaviour of humans, as olfactory cues to emotions, health, and mate choice. A subset of semiochemicals, pheromones, chemical signals within a species, have been identified in many mammal species. As mammals, we may have pheromones too. Sadly, the story of molecules claimed to be ‘putative human pheromones’ is a classic example of bad science carried out by good scientists. Much of human semiochemicals research including work on ‘human pheromones’ and olfactory cues comes within the field of psychology. Thus, the research is highly likely to be affected by the ‘reproducibility crisis’ in psychology and other life sciences. Psychology researchers have responded with proposals to enable better, more reliable science, with an emphasis on enhancing reproducibility. A key change is the adoption of study pre-registration which will also reduce publication bias. Human semiochemicals research would benefit from adopting these proposals.

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Section: (A)mentioning

confidence: 98%

Reproducible research into human semiochemical cues and pheromones: learning from psychology’s renaissance

Wyatt

2019

Preprint

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“…Proteins of the major histocompatibility complex, MHC (also known as HLA, human leucocyte antigen), a key part of the immune system, contribute to individual differences in odour profile, by mechanisms still not fully understood. The evidence for MHC influences on mate choice in humans is now in question [16,17].…”

Section: Chemical Communication: Cues and Pheromonesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reproducible research into human chemical communication by cues and pheromones: learning from psychology's renaissance

Wyatt

2020

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Despite the lack of evidence that the ‘putative human pheromones' androstadienone and estratetraenol ever were pheromones, almost 60 studies have claimed ‘significant' results. These are quite possibly false positives and can be best seen as potential examples of the ‘reproducibility crisis', sadly common in the rest of the life and biomedical sciences, which has many instances of whole fields based on false positives. Experiments on the effects of olfactory cues on human behaviour are also at risk of false positives because they look for subtle effects but use small sample sizes. Research on human chemical communication, much of it falling within psychology, would benefit from vigorously adopting the proposals made by psychologists to enable better, more reliable science, with an emphasis on enhancing reproducibility. A key change is the adoption of study pre-registration and/or Registered Reports which will also reduce publication bias. As we are mammals, and chemical communication is important to other mammals, it is likely that chemical cues are important in our behaviour and that humans may have pheromones, but new approaches will be needed to reliably demonstrate them. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue ‘Olfactory communication in humans’.

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“…There is a line of research which claims an association between MHC variation and preferences for sexual or non-sexual partners in a wide variety of animals including teleost (e.g., reviewed in [228,229]). However, the claims for such associations may not be fully convincing and have been debated (e.g., [230,231]). The most prominent study claiming an MHC-based selection of sexual partners in fish was in stickleback and had Reusch et al, 2001 [232] conclude that female sticklebacks choose their mating partners by MHC class II B gene “counting” in order to assure optimal gene copy numbers in their offspring.…”

Section: Association Of Teleost Fish Mhc Genes With Partner Selecmentioning

confidence: 99%

Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) Genes and Disease Resistance in Fish

Yamaguchi

Dijkstra

2019

Cells

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Fascinating about classical major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules is their polymorphism. The present study is a review and discussion of the fish MHC situation. The basic pattern of MHC variation in fish is similar to mammals, with MHC class I versus class II, and polymorphic classical versus nonpolymorphic nonclassical. However, in many or all teleost fishes, important differences with mammalian or human MHC were observed: (1) The allelic/haplotype diversification levels of classical MHC class I tend to be much higher than in mammals and involve structural positions within but also outside the peptide binding groove; (2) Teleost fish classical MHC class I and class II loci are not linked. The present article summarizes previous studies that performed quantitative trait loci (QTL) analysis for mapping differences in teleost fish disease resistance, and discusses them from MHC point of view. Overall, those QTL studies suggest the possible importance of genomic regions including classical MHC class II and nonclassical MHC class I genes, whereas similar observations were not made for the genomic regions with the highly diversified classical MHC class I alleles. It must be concluded that despite decades of knowing MHC polymorphism in jawed vertebrate species including fish, firm conclusions (as opposed to appealing hypotheses) on the reasons for MHC polymorphism cannot be made, and that the types of polymorphism observed in fish may not be explained by disease-resistance models alone.

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Accumulating evidence suggests that men do not find body odours of human leucocyte antigen-dissimilar women more attractive

Abstract: Accumulating evidence suggests that men do not find body odours of human leucocyte antigen-dissimilar women more attractive.

Cited by 10 publications

References 20 publications

Reproducible research into human semiochemical cues and pheromones: learning from psychology’s renaissance

Reproducible research into human semiochemical cues and pheromones: learning from psychology’s renaissance

Reproducible research into human chemical communication by cues and pheromones: learning from psychology's renaissance

Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) Genes and Disease Resistance in Fish

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