Do blood plasma levels of oxytocin moderate the effect of nasally administered oxytocin on social orienting in high-functioning male adults with autism spectrum disorder?

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Oxytocin in this randomized controlled trial publication.

The study investigated whether baseline plasma oxytocin (OXT) concentrations might moderate the effects of nasally administered OXT on social orienting.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as teenagers, young adults and adults, men only.

Thirty-one males with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and thirty healthy males participated in a double-blind placebo-controlled crossover trial.

After administration of the compound, participants were viewing pictures from the International Affective Picture System that represented a systematic variation of pleasant, unpleasant and neutral scenes with and without humans.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and crossover study.

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.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Oxytocin group a baseline to be compared against.

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

The outcome measures were a cardiac evoked response (ECR) and a cortical evoked long latency parietal positivity (LPP).

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Autism Spectrum Disorder, Central Nervous System Agents, Emotions, Empathy, Evoked Potentials, Orientation and Oxytocin.

Author keywords: Baseline plasma oxytocin, Electrocortical and cardiac evoked responses, Post-oxytocin treatment plasma oxytocin and Social orienting.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

Its findings take up roughly 4 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2016 (Psychopharmacology), a journal based in Germany.

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