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29 March 2024

Pill can make women less attractive: research

Certain contraceptives could make even a sexy or beautiful woman less attractive to a man. (SUPPLIED)

Published
By Rachel McArthur

A word of warning to newly-wed females: choose your method of birth control wisely or risk looking less attractive to your other half.

That’s what a new US study is suggesting anyway.

Scientists have come up with the theory that taking certain birth control substances could make a woman less attractive to a man – no matter how sexy or beautiful she is.

In the new study published by Duke University, researchers suggest that some types of contraceptives can alter scent in a way that puts off a sexual partner.

The findings come from tests on 12 ring-tailed lemurs in Madagascar, who were treated with one of the world’s best-selling contraceptive injections, Depo-Provera.

As a result, the female lemurs sent out different scent molecules and so were shunned by the male.

“There’s something very different about these gals,” said study author Professor Christine Drea, an evolutionary anthropologist at the university. “One has to wonder if human mate choice might be affected in some of the same ways it has been in these primates.”

There is no doubt that research on human subjects is required to test the hypothesis, and the study is reportedly set to be extended later on.