News coverage included:

-ABC Online,
-WebMD,
-Atlanta Journal Constitution,
-San Francisco Examiner,
-Cleveland Plain Dealer,
-Discovery TV,
-New Scientist,
....and several news wire services.

Excerpts below...

"Something in the Way She Smells " 3/21/02 (full article)

Women who wore perfume with synthesized female pheromone were more attractive to their male partners, conclude scientists at San Francisco State University.

The new study, appearing in the journal Physiology and Behavior, found that women who had pheromone added to their perfume reported a more than 50 percent increase in sexual attention from men: they were involved in more sexual intercourse, kissing, heavy petting, affection, and slept closer to their partner or date.

"The most highly significant difference between the placebo and the pheromone group was actually sexual intercourse," says Norma McCoy, lead author and professor of psychology at San Francisco State University. "It is clear that there is something that is odorless and is being exuded from reproductive age women that affects male behavior that makes the women attractive." ...

The pheromone used in the study is what its maker, Athena Institute for Women's Wellness Research, believes is a generic substrate, a substance that when put on someone's skin reacts with that person's own chemistry to achieve its effect. Adds Winnifred Cutler, institute founder and president and a reproductive biologist and co-discoverer of pheromones in humans, "When it works for a woman, it doesn't seem to matter what perfume she wears."

Research has also shown that significantly more men who wore aftershave with a synthetic version of a male-excreted pheromone engaged in sexual intercourse and sleeping next to their partner than those who wore aftershave with placebo.
The institute is offering the pheromone for sale, using the proceeds to fund pheromone research. The company also sells a pheromone that can be worn by men. (End of ABC excerpt)

"Got Pheromones? Get Affection"

-Forget the expensive French perfumes. If a woman really wants to reel a man in, all she needs to do is dab a dose of odorless pheromones strategically to her pulse points, and men will shower her with affection. At least that's what the results of one small study show.


The study, published in the journal Physiology and Behavior, found lacing a woman's perfume with a synthetic pheromone dramatically increases a woman's sex appeal to the opposite sex.


The study found 74% of women who wore their regular perfume with the added pheromone saw a significant increase in three or more of the following types of intimate behaviors with men:


Frequency of kissing


Heavy petting and affection


Sexual intercourse


Sleeping next to their partner


Formal dates with men


Only 23% of women who had a placebo added to their perfume reported an increase in these factors. Researchers say those results show it was the pheromones that made the women more sexually attractive to men.


"This is a biological signal to a man that suggests that this woman can reproduce and he responds with romantic behavior related to securing intimate relations with her," says study author Norma McCoy, a psychology professor at San Francisco State University, in a news release. "This is not a smell one can detect, neither the man nor the woman is aware of it, but it is very powerful. The chemical appears to influence a man's desire to have sexual intercourse."
For the study, 19 women wore the pheromone-laced perfumes for 14 weeks, and researchers compared their activities with the opposite sex to 17 women who used plain perfume. Only intimate activities that required a male partner were affected by the use of pheromones...


Some perfume makers claim to put pheromones in their heady concoctions, but researchers say this is the first study of its kind to independently test a synthetic pheromone for women, created specifically to attract a man by the Athena Institute for Women's Wellness. (end of WebMd excerpt)

---

Take the route through a man's stomach to win his heart, according to the old axiom. But if sex is your aim, bypass the belly and make a beeline through his nasal cavity.


So suggests a San Francisco State University study on pheromones, those natural substances we excrete that attract others through scent.

The study, appearing in the current issue of Physiology and Behavior, involved 36 fertile, sexually active, heterosexual female students whose favorite perfumes were laced with two ounces of a synthetic pheromone or placebo alloy.


A little dab --- under the nose, on the cheeks or behind the ears --- apparently did it; nearly three-fourths of the women with the pheromone-laced perfume reported an increase in the frequency of intimate encounters with men --- from formal dating, kissing and heavy petting to sexual intercourse. That compares with 23 percent of the women without the pheromone who drew as much attention from the opposite sex...
Pheromone fans are not surprised.


"The strongest difference between the women with the pheromone and those with the placebo is in sexual intercourse," said psychology professor Norma McCoy, who designed the study. "This says something about pheromones and reproduction."...
Exactly what it's saying, though, is anyone's guess. No one really knows how pheromones go about hooking their vaporous fingers into the nostrils of the opposite sex and unceremoniously reeling them in.


"Personally I think sexual attraction is extremely complex and, as in the case of most complexities, it becomes difficult to decipher it," said Winnifred Cutler, a biologist who is credited with co-discovering human pheromones in 1986.
Cutler, who met and worked with McCoy at Stanford University, grasped the pheromone phenom enough to develop, test and market artificial pheromones for men and women.


The male pheromone aftershave additive called 10X performed admirably in a double-blind scientific study conducted by Cutler's Pennsylvania-based Athena Institute. The female pheromone, dubbed Athena Pheromone 10:13 (in honor of Cutler's birthday) was used in the SFSU study.

Call it love at first smell.
A study conducted by San Francisco State University researchers reveals that women's perfume laced with synthetic pheromones acts as a sexual magnet and increases the sexual attractiveness of women to men. The study is the first of its kind to independently test a sex-attractant pheromone for women...

In the study, 36 women wore their own, regular perfume with the pheromones. Of the 36 women tested, 74 percent saw an overall increase in three or more of the following sociosexual behaviors: frequency of kissing, heavy petting and affection, sexual intercourse, sleeping next to their partner, and formal dates with men.

"This is a biological signal to a man that suggests that this woman can reproduce and he responds with romantic behavior related to securing intimate relations with her," said research author Norma McCoy, a psychology professor at SFSU...

Translation: Women wearing perfumes containing pheromones get more action.

Mighty messengers. The study -- conducted for 14 weeks in 2000 -- recruited 36 women between the ages of 19 and 48 years old through on-campus psychology and human sexuality classes. The criteria called for women who were heterosexual, regularly menstruating, neither married to nor living with a man, not currently using an oral contraceptive and in good health.

Here's how the study worked: Each participant first recorded baseline information every day for two weeks on seven sociosexual behaviors, including petting, affection and kissing, sleeping next to a romantic partner, sexual intercourse, formal dates, informal dates, the number of times a man approached her, and masturbation.

The women then selected vials -- containing either the synthetic pheromone {Athena Pheromone 10:13} or a placebo -- whose contents were clear, odorless and identical in appearance, and added the contents to two ounces of their perfume. Each woman applied two to three dabs of the perfume under her nose, on her cheeks and behind her ears at least every other day.

A total of 19 women wore the pheromone-laced perfume while 17 women had placebo perfume. Not much changed for the women in the categories of informal dates, the number of times a man approached the women and masturbation. However, intimate behaviors that required a partner (i.e. sex, cuddling) increased among those wearing the perfume containing the pheromone.Now, are you wondering, where you can get some ... pheromone-laced perfume, that is?
(end of SFExaminer Excerpt)

A dab of artificial sweat can hugely increase your chance for romance, say researchers in California. They found that a commercial synthetic "pheromone" tripled the sexual success of women.

Psychologist Norma McCoy and her student Lisa Pitino at San Francisco State University found in a study of 36 women that sexual behaviour with men was three times as high in women who added a sexy chemical to their perfume, compared to women who received a placebo.

McCoy believes the additive, known only as Athena Pheromone 10:13, is making them more attractive to men. She rules out an alternative explanation, that the pheromone is increasing sexual drive, because masturbation was not increased.

"It's a very impressive study with data that looks incredible," says Joan Friebely of Harvard University who is now looking at the effect of the same pheromone in post-menopausal women...

Sexual attention. Pheromones are chemicals that animals emit to attract sexual attention. They are crucial to the mating behaviour of many insects and their existence has been firmly established in mice and hamsters.

Mammalian pheromones appear to act by binding to protein receptors located in the nose. But the role of pheromones in humans remains controversial, despite reported effects on menstrual cycles and relaxation reflexes in the opposite sex.

McCoy's colleague, Winnifred Cutler, founded an institute that searches for human pheromones and sells synthetic versions. In 1998, the pair co-authored a paper on another secret Athena formula called 10X that increased the sexual success of men (Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol 20, p 463).

But McCoy says the new report is scientifically and financially independent from Cutler, who only provided the blinded samples.

Spiked perfume. McCoy and her student recruited healthy heterosexual women and asked them to record their normal frequencies of sexual behaviours including male approaches, kissing, heavy petting, sexual intercourse and masturbation for two weeks. Then for six weeks, 19 women were randomly assigned a placebo to mix with their perfume, while 17 others were given 10:13.

The results were dramatic: 74 per cent of the women using the pheromone reported an increase in three or more of the activities and an increase in sexual intercourse was one of the strongest effects.

In contrast, only 23 per cent of the placebo group reported a rise in three or more categories, and this was mostly in the less intimate activities such as informal dates...

Cutler told New Scientist she will reveal the formula once her patent, which has been pending for 10 years, is granted. She also points out that Athena 10:13 is not used as a drug, but as make-up. Few cosmetics can boast a peer-reviewed, randomised, placebo-controlled studies to back up their claims, she says.

"And if a woman using this gets more affection, more dates, more loving, she probably doesn't care what receptor it's binding," Cutler adds.

(end of NewScientist.com excerpt)