TY - JOUR
T1 - Intranasal oxytocin in the treatment of autism spectrum disorders
T2 - A multilevel meta-analysis
AU - Huang, Yi
AU - Huang, Xin
AU - Ebstein, Richard P.
AU - Yu, Rongjun
N1 - Funding Information:
This work is supported by the Lam Woo Research Fund – Individual Grant, 185605 , Lingnan University, Hong Kong, China .
PY - 2021/3
Y1 - 2021/3
N2 - Intranasal oxytocin has been shown to promote social functioning and has recently been applied as a treatment for autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The current meta-analysis aims to assess the crucial question of oxytocin's efficacy in the treatment of ASD. We performed a systematic literature search, including randomized, single- or double-blind/open-label and placebo-controlled clinical trials as well as single-arm, non-randomized and uncontrolled studies investigating exogenous oxytocin effect on ASD. A total of 28 studies (N = 726 ASD patients) met our predefined inclusion criteria. We used a multilevel meta-analytic model and found that oxytocin had beneficial effects on social functioning, but did not find strong evidence for symptoms improvement in the non-social domain. Our findings suggest that oxytocin administration can be regarded as an effective treatment for some core aspects of ASD, especially in the domain of social functioning, highlighting the promise of using oxytocin as a new-generation therapeutic to address core social impairments in ASD.
AB - Intranasal oxytocin has been shown to promote social functioning and has recently been applied as a treatment for autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The current meta-analysis aims to assess the crucial question of oxytocin's efficacy in the treatment of ASD. We performed a systematic literature search, including randomized, single- or double-blind/open-label and placebo-controlled clinical trials as well as single-arm, non-randomized and uncontrolled studies investigating exogenous oxytocin effect on ASD. A total of 28 studies (N = 726 ASD patients) met our predefined inclusion criteria. We used a multilevel meta-analytic model and found that oxytocin had beneficial effects on social functioning, but did not find strong evidence for symptoms improvement in the non-social domain. Our findings suggest that oxytocin administration can be regarded as an effective treatment for some core aspects of ASD, especially in the domain of social functioning, highlighting the promise of using oxytocin as a new-generation therapeutic to address core social impairments in ASD.
KW - Autism Spectrum Disorder
KW - Non-social domain improvement
KW - Oxytocin
KW - Social functioning
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85099148745&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.12.028
DO - 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.12.028
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 33400920
AN - SCOPUS:85099148745
SN - 0149-7634
VL - 122
SP - 18
EP - 27
JO - Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
JF - Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
ER -