Clinical and neural effects of six-week administration of oxytocin on core symptoms of autism

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Oxytocin in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Here, to address this issue, the researchers performed an exploratory, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial including 20 high-functional adult males with autism spectrum disorder.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 18 participants taking part.

The age groups tagged for this paper are young adults and adults, men only.

How the Study Was Run

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

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Oxytocin and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

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.

In the crossover set-up each of the participants took both Oxytocin and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Autism Spectrum Disorder, Autistic Disorder, Brain, Functional Neuroimaging, Gyrus Cinguli, Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Neural Pathways.

The authors tagged it with the keywords clinical trial, functional MRI, neuropeptide, pervasive developmental disorder and resting-state functional connectivity.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Oxytocin in 18 participants.

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.

The publication is from 2015 (Brain : a journal of neurology), a journal based in England.

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