Pheromones pass the intimacy test

SO IT does work. Add a dab of extra pheromone, the odourless chemical sexual attractant, to your body's normal production and women will swoon at your feet.

American scientists claim to have demonstrated the sexual importance of the nose in an experiment in which the aftershave of 17 men was secretly spiked with a synthetic version of a naturally occurring male pheromone secreted in the armpit. Over the next two weeks the men, aged 25 to 42, enjoyed more intimate encounters with women, ranging from going out to dinner to going to bed, than a second group which continued using the same unaltered aftershave as before.

Before the study, each group had recorded how much kissing, petting and dating they had done with only their natural pheromones to help. Of those given the extra dose 41 per cent experienced a rise in "intimate behaviours" compared with 9 per cent of the untreated group.

Although published in February, results of the study by researchers from Brooklyn College, New York and San Francisco State University, and scientists from Athena Institute in Pennsylvania, only became widely known yesterday.