Effects of intrathecal sufentanil on plasma oxytocin and cortisol concentrations in women during the first stage of labor

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Oxytocin in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Intrathecal sufentanil provides analgesia comparable to epidural bupivacaine for the first stage of labor.

This study compared the effect of intrathecal sufentanil and epidural bupivacaine administration on the plasma concentration of oxytocin and cortisol in women with labor pain during the first stage of labor.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, women only.

Thirty healthy parturients requesting analgesia were enrolled in this randomized and open-label study.

Each patient was in spontaneous labor at greater than 5 cm cervical dilatation.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized and open-label study.

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Oxytocin group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Being open-label, the Oxytocin study did not mask who received what.

Analgesia was assessed using a visual analog scale, and blood samples for oxytocin and cortisol plasma concentration measurements were collected immediately before analgesia and 15, 30, 60, and 90 minutes after induction of the analgesia.

Plasma cortisol and oxytocin concentrations were determined by specific radioimmunoassay.

The values were expressed as mean +/- SEM.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Analgesia, Epidural, Analgesia, Obstetrical, Analgesics, Opioid, Blood Pressure, Heart Rate, Hydrocortisone and Injections, Spinal.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and open-label study of Oxytocin.

Results are reported in around 6 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2001 (Regional anesthesia and pain medicine), a journal based in England.

More context: the Oxytocin compound page, all human trials.