With the new study, scientists who administered doses of oxytocin to mice displaying symptoms of autism spectrum disorders or ramped up the animals’ production of the hormone saw that “it would rescue those social deficits,” according to researcher Larry Young. Dr. Young expressed his comments to the website The Scientist.
Oxytocin is a powerful hormone. When people hug or kiss a loved one, oxytocin levels rapidly increase. The hormone also acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain. Recent studies have begun to investigate oxytocin’s role in various behaviors, including orgasm, social recognition, pair bonding, anxiety, and maternal behaviors. To this growing list, autism can be added.
Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and verbal and non-verbal communication. It is also associated with restricted, repetitive or stereotyped behavior. The symptoms normally become apparent before a child is three years old.
With the new study, researchers found that mutant mice that exhibit many of the characteristics of human autism spectrum disorders, including social deficiency, have more interactions with fellow mice when given a dose of oxytocin.
Whether the same effects would be seen with human children is unknown at this stage. Nonetheless, the researchers are theorizing that there might be a window of treatment opportunity soon after birth for obtaining such long-lasting effects. To test this would require numerous drug safety tests on animals and for the intended treatment to go before an ethics committee long before a human child was tested.
Another factor to consider is that autism is not simply one condition; there are numerous types of autism with multiple potential causes. Hormone therapy may only address one cause or one type of condition across the autism spectrum.
The results of the study have been published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The study is titled “Exogenous and evoked oxytocin restores social behavior in the Cntnap2 mouse model of autism.”
