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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Autism
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1477076

Optimal dose of oxytocin to improve social impairments and repetitive behaviors in autism spectrum disorders: Mate-analysis and dose-response meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Provisionally accepted
Yingying Zhang Yingying Zhang 1,2*Xiaolu Zhang Xiaolu Zhang 3Linghong Huang Linghong Huang 4
  • 1 University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany
  • 2 Department of Molecular Psychology, Institute of Psychology and Education, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany, Ulm, Germany
  • 3 Anhui Children's Hospital, Pediatric Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University, Hefei, China, Hefei, China
  • 4 The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, Ministry of Education Key Lab for Neuroin-formation, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China, Chengdu, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Social impairments and repetitive behaviors are at the core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Intranasal administration of the neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) is a promising treatment. However, there have been inconsistencies in the effects of OXT on social impairments and repetitive behaviors. Therefore, a comprehensive search in PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Embase, and Web of Science was conducted to gather randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on the efficacy of OXT in patients diagnosed with ASD up to June 11, 2024. The core outcomes were social impairments measured by total Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) scores and repetitive behaviors measured by the Repetitive Behavior Scale (RBS). This meta-analysis ultimately included 12 RCTs with 498 ASD patients. In an initial analysis, intranasal OXT showed no significant effect on social impairments. For a high dose of 48 IU per day, a beneficial effect on social impairments was found. According to the dose-response meta-analysis, the results indicated that higher doses of OXT might be more effective for social impairments. Depending on repetitive behaviors, the overall analysis showed no significant effect, while the dose over 48 IU per day revealed significant results and the dose-response meta-analysis suggested that higher doses could be more effective for repetitive behaviors. Though these findings show no consistent beneficial effects, the results of the dose-response meta-analysis suggest that high doses of intranasal OXT per day may be more effective in ASD.

    Keywords: Oxytocin, Autism Spectrum Disorder, ASD, dose-response, Meta-analysis

    Received: 07 Aug 2024; Accepted: 18 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Zhang, Zhang and Huang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Yingying Zhang, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.