A Preliminary Examination of Endogenous Peripheral Oxytocin in a Pilot Randomized Clinical Trial of Oxytocin-Enhanced Psychotherapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Oxytocin, published as a randomized controlled trial.

However, little is known about the relationship between levels of peripheral oxytocin and PTSD symptom severity, PTSD treatment response, and repeated intranasal oxytocin administration.

Who Took Part

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

In the current study, the researchers examined associations between PTSD symptom severity and peripheral oxytocin levels measured in plasma before and after a course of prolonged exposure (PE) for PTSD (n = 13); participants were randomized to adjunctive intranasal oxytocin (n = 6) or placebo (n = 7).

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and pilot study.

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 participants and researchers unaware of who received Oxytocin.

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

It is described as a pilot, a small early test of whether a larger Oxytocin study would be practical.

What Was Measured

However, little is known about the relationship between levels of peripheral oxytocin and PTSD symptom severity, PTSD treatment response, and repeated intranasal oxytocin administration.

PubMed files the paper under topics including Combined Modality Therapy, Implosive Therapy, Oxytocin, Pilot Projects and Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

Its findings take up roughly 3 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2020 (Journal of clinical psychopharmacology), a journal based in United States.

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