Molecule Gives Passionate Lovers One Year

Your heartbeat accelerates, you have butterflies in the stomach, you feel euphoric and a bit silly. It's all part of falling passionately in love -- and scientists now say the feeling won't last more than a year.

The powerful emotions that bowl over new lovers are triggered by a molecule known as nerve growth factor (NGF), according to researchers at Pavia University in Rome.

The Italian scientists found far higher levels of NGF in the blood of 58 people who had recently fallen madly in love than in that of a group of singles and people in long-term relationships.

But after a year with the same lover, the quantity of the 'love molecule' in their blood had fallen to the same level as that of the other groups.

The researchers said it was not clear how falling in love triggers higher levels of NGF, but the molecule has an important role in the "social chemistry" between people at the start of a relationship and rapidly falls to normal levels after the first year.

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