Puberty adjustments nearly all the things. Our bodies get taller, muscle tissues get stronger — and sometimes, physique odor turns into extra pungent. Now, scientists have recognized a few of the compounds that give youngsters their pure aroma.
Not like that of infants and toddlers, teenage physique odor has two smelly steroids and better ranges of carboxylic acids, researchers report March 21 in Communications Chemistry. These chemical compounds type when micro organism break down armpit sweat and sebum, the oily secretions that maintain our pores and skin moist, and should contribute to the noticeable adjustments in BO all through puberty.
“Physique odor adjustments via improvement,” says chemist Helene Loos of Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany. “There’s a actually nice range of various odor compounds which can be current in physique odors.”
Loos and colleagues collected physique odor samples from 18 teenagers age 14 to 18 and 18 younger kids age 0 to three who had slept with cotton pads beneath their arms for an evening. Separating the physique odor into particular person parts revealed that younger kids and teenagers have over 40 compounds in widespread.
Whereas some courses of chemical compounds confirmed no distinction between age teams, the scents of carboxylic acids had been extra prevalent in teenagers. These compounds had been a mixture of nice scents, described by a panel skilled to judge olfactory cues as fruity, soapy or grassy, and less-appealing ones that smelled tacky, musty or goatlike.
Researchers additionally recognized two steroids current solely within the teenagers’ physique odor. One, referred to as 5α-androst-16-en-3-one, smells of sweat, urine and musk. The opposite, referred to as 5α-androst-16-en-3α-ol, smells of musk and sandalwood.
A couple of parts of scented merchandise additionally turned up, regardless of contributors avoiding deodorant and utilizing unscented physique wash and detergent for 2 days previous to the examine.
Notably, some compounds identified to contribute to robust physique odor weren’t detected, says biochemist Andreas Natsch of Givaudan, a perfume and taste producer headquartered in Vernier, Switzerland. These chemical compounds would possibly require completely different detection strategies, or they might present up extra after exercising or working up a sweat (SN: 7/13/21).
In future work, Loos hopes to search for these compounds and to review how BO adjustments at different levels of improvement (SN: 5/30/12).
