The effect of oxytocin, gender, and ovarian hormones on stress reactivity in individuals with cocaine use disorder

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Oxytocin in this randomized controlled trial publication.

To examine the impact of oxytocin (oxytocin (OXY) vs. placebo (PBO)) and gender (female (F) vs. male (M)) on response to a social stress task in individuals with CUD.

To explore whether ovarian hormones moderate this stress response.

Generalized linear mixed models were used to examine neuroendocrine (cortisol) and subjective (craving, stress) response at pre-stressor, stressor + 0, + 10, + 30, + 60 min.

Why It Was Studied

Men and women with CUD differ in reactivity to social stressors.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as young adults, adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

Forty minutes after drug administration, participants were exposed to a social stressor.

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.

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

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

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Cocaine-Related Disorders, Estradiol, Gonadal Steroid Hormones, Hydrocortisone, Hypothalamo-Hypophyseal System, Ovary and Oxytocin.

Author keywords: Cocaine use disorder, Cortisol, Cue-reactivity, Gender, Sex and Stress.

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

The publication is from 2020 (Psychopharmacology), a journal based in Germany.

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