Some 50% of fertilizations and 15% of pregnancies result in miscarriages. Now researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science have discovered a surprising link between miscarriages and a woman's sense of smell.
A new study published in the journal eLife lays out findings from Professor Noam Sobel's lab, which indicate that women who suffer repeated, unexplained miscarriages perceive a man's body scent different than other women.
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Women were divided into two groups – those who had undergone unexplained miscarriages and those who had not. Researchers found that women in the first group were able to pick out their partner's body scent from a group of other men's scents. The women who had undergone unexplained miscarriages also had slightly better senses of smell than women in the control group.
Additionally, not only were women from the first group better able to identify their partner's body scents, they also perceived the body scent of males in general differently than women in the control group.
"It's possible that doctors aren't finding an explanation for these miscarriages because they're looking in the wrong place – they are checking the reproductive system, whereas the [right] direction might be the nervous system, particularly the part of the brain that detects smells," said Reut Weisgross, who led the research along with Dr. Liron Rosenkrantz and Dr. Tali Weiss.
