Plasma oxytocin changes and anti-obsessive response during serotonin reuptake inhibitor treatment: a placebo controlled study

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Oxytocin in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Few studies have investigated whether SRIs have any effect on oxytocin; thus, their aim was to explore the possibility that oxytocinergic mechanisms contribute to the anti-obsessive effect of SRIs.

Why It Was Studied

The drug treatments of choice for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRIs).

Who Took Part

The study group was 36 adults.

The age groups tagged for this paper are teenagers, adults and middle-aged adults.

In a randomized, double-blind trial, comparing SRIs (clomipramine and paroxetine) with placebo in 36 adults with OCD (characterized for subtypes), plasma oxytocin was measured with radioimmunoassay after plasma extraction, at baseline, after 1 week, and after 4 weeks of treatment, and related to baseline severity and clinical response after 12 weeks, as measured by the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS).

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled.

Because people in this Oxytocin study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

As a double-blind Oxytocin study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Oxytocin could be set against what happens without it.

The methods mention a period of 1 week.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Clomipramine, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Oxytocin, Paroxetine and Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Oxytocin in 36 adults over 1 week.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Results are reported in around 9 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2013 (BMC psychiatry), a journal based in England.

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