No side-effects of single intranasal oxytocin administration in middle childhood

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Oxytocin.

The current study is the first double-blind randomized controlled trial to examine side-effects following single administration of oxytocin nasal spray in elementary school-aged children.

Why It Was Studied

Despite growing interest in the (therapeutic) use of intranasal oxytocin administration in children, the potential side-effects of intranasal oxytocin have remained largely unclear to date.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as children, both men and women.

One hundred children (8-12 years old) were randomly assigned to receive oxytocin or placebo nasal spray.

How the Study Was Run

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

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Oxytocin group and the comparison group should start out alike.

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

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

The researchers assessed side-effects by means of a standardized, drug-specific questionnaire and an open-ended question at two time points: 90 min after nasal spray administration and 24 h after administration.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions, Nasal Sprays, Oxytocics, Oxytocin and Surveys and Questionnaires.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Intranasal administration, Middle childhood, Randomized controlled trial and Side-effects.

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 5 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2018 (Psychopharmacology), a journal based in Germany.

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