Intranasal oxytocin administration improves mood in new mothers with moderate low mood but not in mothers with elevated symptoms of postnatal depression: A randomised controlled trial

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Oxytocin in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Oxytocin (OT) is a neuropeptide hormone that has anxiolytic and antidepressant effects, and positive effects on social affiliation and behaviour, particularly in parenting and attachment relationships.

Who Took Part

PubMed tags the participants as women only.

A double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomised controlled-trial, within-subjects, cross-over design was conducted.

Participants were screened for traits of PND on the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and assigned into 2 groups: probable PND cases (N = 26, scoring ≥9) and controls (N = 32, scoring ≤9).

How the Study Was Run

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

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

Each person switched between Oxytocin and the comparison at some point, usually with a gap in between.

Mothers (N = 58) between 3 and 9 months postpartum.

Participants rated their current mood on the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) at Baseline (before nasal administration), Condition 1 (after first OT/Placebo administration) and Condition 2 (after second OT/Placebo administration).

PND was assessed by the EPDS, rather than a clinical diagnosis.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Depression, Postpartum, Mothers, Oxytocin and Parenting.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Mood and Postnatal depression.

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

The publication is from 2022 (Journal of affective disorders), a journal based in Netherlands.

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