Effects of oxytocin and anaesthesia on vascular tone in pregnant women: a randomised double-blind placebo-controlled study using non-invasive pulse wave analysis

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Oxytocin in this randomized controlled trial publication.

The objective was to investigate whether oxytocin affects cardiac function and vascular tone in large and small arteries.

Why It Was Studied

Oxytocin is an uterotonic drug with profound cardiovascular effects, which in compromised patients could lead to serious events.

Trial registration number ISRCTN17860978 , 2018/03/14, Retrospectively registered.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 51 women taking part.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, women only.

How the Study Was Run

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

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Oxytocin and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Blinding on both sides kept the women and researchers unaware of who received Oxytocin.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Oxytocin could be set against what happens without it.

Oxytocin or placebo was administered once either early or late in the procedure, in a double-blind fashion.

Digital photoplethysmography pulse wave analysis variables, heart rate, mean arterial blood pressure and electrocardiographic ST index were recorded before and after anaesthesia and after each injection.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Abortion, Induced, Anesthesia, Anesthetics, Arteries, Blood Pressure, Cardiac Output and Cardiovascular Physiological Phenomena.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Anaesthesia, Arterial stiffness, Oxytocin, Photoplethysmography, Placebo and Pregnancy.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Oxytocin in 51 women.

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2018 (BMC pregnancy and childbirth), a journal based in England.

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