A Randomized Clinical Trial of Oxytocin or Galantamine for the Treatment of Negative Symptoms and Cognitive Impairments in People With Schizophrenia

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Oxytocin, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Negative symptoms and cognitive impairments tend to co-occur in people with schizophrenia.

The current study was designed to examine this hypothesis.

The Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms total score was used to assess change in negative symptoms (the primary outcome measure for oxytocin).

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

Fifty-eight participants with either Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder entered into a 6-week double-blind, placebo-controlled, double-dummy, randomized clinical trial of intranasal oxytocin and galantamine.

Seventeen participants were randomized to intranasal oxytocin, 20 were randomized to galantamine, and 21 were randomized to placebo.

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.

Some participants received a placebo instead of Oxytocin, giving a reference point.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Cognitive Dysfunction, Galantamine, Nootropic Agents, Oxytocics, Oxytocin, Pessimism and Schizophrenia.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 4 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2017 (Journal of clinical psychopharmacology), a journal based in United States.

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