Unaltered Oxytocin and Vasopressin Plasma Levels in Patients with Schizophrenia After 4 Months of Daily Treatment with Intranasal Oxytocin

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Oxytocin and Vasopressin.

The neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) has been proposed as a treatment for a number of neuropsychiatric disorders characterised by impaired social behaviour, including schizophrenia.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 31 patients taking part.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were teenagers, young adults, adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

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

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.

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

A time span of 4 months appears in the methods.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Blood Pressure, Eating, Neurophysins, Osmolar Concentration, Oxytocin, Protein Precursors and Schizophrenia.

Author keywords: chronic treatment, intranasal oxytocin and radioimmunoassay.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Oxytocin and Vasopressin in 31 patients over 4 months.

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 2016 (Journal of neuroendocrinology), a journal based in United States.

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