Intranasal Oxytocin in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Oxytocin.

Oxytocin has been administered in clinical practice to many children with autism spectrum disorder.

Who Took Part

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

The researchers conducted a 24-week, placebo-controlled phase 2 trial of intranasal oxytocin therapy in children and adolescents 3 to 17 years of age with autism spectrum disorder.

How the Study Was Run

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

As a double-blind Oxytocin study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

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

The primary outcome was the least-squares mean change from baseline on the Aberrant Behavior Checklist modified Social Withdrawal subscale (ABC-mSW), which includes 13 items (scores range from 0 to 39, with higher scores indicating less social interaction).

Secondary outcomes included two additional measures of social function and an abbreviated measure of IQ.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Autism Spectrum Disorder, Least-Squares Analysis, Oxytocin, Social Behavior, Social Skills and Treatment Failure.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

Results are reported in around 7 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2021 (The New England journal of medicine), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Oxytocin compound page.