Intranasal oxytocin reduces heart rate variability during a mental arithmetic task: A randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled cross-over study

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Oxytocin in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Heart rate variability (HRV) refers to variation in the interval between successive heart beats.

Low HRV is an indicator of potential autonomic nervous system dysfunction.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 24 individuals were involved.

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

How the Study Was Run

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

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.

Neither the individuals nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Oxytocin, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

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

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

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Autonomic Nervous System, Chronic Pain, Heart Rate, Mathematical Concepts, Neck Pain, Neuropsychological Tests and Oxytocin.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Heart rate variability and Musculoskeletal.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Oxytocin in 24 individuals.

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 2018 (Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology & biological psychiatry), a journal based in England.

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