The Major Histocompatibility Complex and Perfumers' Descriptions of Human Body Odors

Abstract

The MHC (major histocompatibility complex) is a group of genes that play a crucial role in immune recognition and in tolerance of tissue grafting. The MHC has also been found to influence body odors, body odor preferences, and mate choice in mice and humans. Here we test whether verbal descriptions of human body odors can be linked to the MHC. We asked 45 male students to live as odor neutral as possible for two consecutive days and to wear a T-shirt during the nights. The odors of these T-shirts were then described by five evaluators: two professional perfumers and three laymen. One of the perfumers was able to describe the T-shirt odors in such a way that some of the allelic specificity of the MHC was significantly revealed (after Bonferroni correction for multiple testing). This shows that, although difficult, some people are able to describe MHC-correlated body odor components.