SynthesisPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2020
Major histocompatibility complex-associated odour preferences and human mate choice: near and far horizons.
Synthesis in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 63 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pharmacological topics of interest for young people: misinformation on TikTok is common.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2026Article
- No evidence for disassortative mating based on HLA in a small-scale, endogamous population.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Mate assessment based on physical characteristics: a review and reflection.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Past, Present, and Future of Human Chemical Communication Research.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2025Review
- Article
- Testing effects of partner support and use of oral contraception during relationship formation on severity of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2023Article
- Facial attractiveness is only weakly linked to genome-wide heterozygosity.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Genetic and epigenetic effects on couple adjustment in context of romantic relationship: A scoping systematic review.Frontiers in genetics · 2023Article
- Article
- Quantitative proteomics analysis to assess protein expression levels in the ovaries of pubescent goats.BMC genomics · 2022Article
- Sniffing out smell's effects on human behaviour.Nature · 2022Article
- Marriage does not relate to major histocompatibility complex: a genetic analysis based on 3691 couples.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Reproducible research into human chemical communication by cues and pheromones: learning from psychology's renaissance.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- Interdisciplinary challenges for elucidating human olfactory attractiveness.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- Consequences of undetected olfactory loss for human chemosensory communication and well-being.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
- The specific biochemistry of human axilla odour formation viewed in an evolutionary context.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- Decoding the social volatilome by tracking rapid context-dependent odour change.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Human olfactory communication: current challenges and future prospects.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Olfaction scaffolds the developing human from neonate to adolescent and beyond.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- More Data, Please: Machine Learning to Advance the Multidisciplinary Science of Human Sociochemistry.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is a core part of the adaptive immune system. As in other vertebrate taxa, it may also affect human chemical communication via odour-based mate preferences, with greater attraction towards MHC-dissimilar partners. However, despite some well-known findings, the available evidence is equivocal and made complicated by varied approaches to quantifying human mate choice. To address this, we here conduct comprehensive meta-analyses focusing on studies assessing: (i) genomic mate selection, (ii) relationship satisfaction, (iii) odour preference, and (iv) all studies combined. Analysis of genomic studies reveals no association between MHC-dissimilarity and mate choice in actual couples; however, MHC effects appear to be independent of the genomic background. The effect of MHC-dissimilarity on relationship satisfaction was not significant, and we found evidence for publication bias in studies on this area. There was also no significant association between MHC-dissimilarity and odour preferences. Finally, combining effect sizes from all genomic, relationship satisfaction, odour preference and previous mate choice studies into an overall estimate showed no overall significant effect of MHC-similarity on human mate selection. Based on these findings, we make a set of recommendations for future studies, focusing both on aspects that should be implemented immediately and those that lurk on the far horizon. We need larger samples with greater geographical and cultural diversity that control for genome-wide similarity. We also need more focus on mechanisms of MHC-associated odour preferences and on MHC-associated pregnancy loss. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Olfactory communication in humans'.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.