Oxytocin Effects on Food Stimulus Processing and Food Intake in Females With or Without Binge Eating Disorder

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Oxytocin in this randomized controlled trial publication.

The researchers assessed the acute effect of oxytocin on food stimulus processing and reward-driven eating behavior in females with or without BED in a double-blind, placebo-controlled cross-over study.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were young adults and adults, women only.

In participants with a natural menstrual cycle, sessions were scheduled during consecutive luteal phases.

Participants completed a food-related dot-probe task with concurrent eye tracking and a bogus taste test measuring snack intake.

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.

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

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

The subject headings attached to it are Oxytocin, Binge-Eating Disorder, Eating, Reward, Feeding Behavior, Overweight and Energy Intake.

The authors tagged it with the keywords attentional bias, binge eating disorder (BED), food intake, hormonal contraception and menstrual cycle.

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

The publication is from 2026 (The International journal of eating disorders), a journal based in United States.

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