Intranasal oxytocin alters amygdala-temporal resting-state functional connectivity in body dysmorphic disorder: A double-blind placebo-controlled randomized trial

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Oxytocin.

Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of intranasal OXT on amygdala resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) in BDD.

Why It Was Studied

The aetiology of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is poorly understood.

Who Took Part

The study group was 19 participants.

PubMed indexes the participants as young adults and 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 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.

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

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Amygdala, Body Dysmorphic Disorders, Case-Control Studies, Connectome, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Neural Pathways.

Author keywords: Attention, Functional connectivity, Oxytocin, Psychiatry, Resting-state fMRI and Salience.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Oxytocin in 19 participants.

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 2019 (Psychoneuroendocrinology), a journal based in England.

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