Oxytocin and its possible use with autism

My son has autism, and while he is learning (13 years old reading at a third grade level), his social functioning is very delayed. He struggles with eye contact, has trouble with touch (he will hold someone's hand, but won't use appropriate pressure- he'll just have his hand somewhat touching but not really). He doesn't seem to want to interact, and he gets lost in his thoughts. I have often wondered if oxytocin would help him. Any thoughts on when and if more research will be done?

Thanks

Hi BusyMom2Three, and welcome to IAN.

I believe that the studies that have been done so far on oxytocin as a treatment for autism have been promising, but very small. The studies that have been done so far are:

Oxytocin infusion reduces repetitive behaviors in adults with autistic and Asperger's disorders: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12496956

This study's strength was that it was a well designed study: randomized, double-blind, using oxytocin and a placebo and comparing results. It was a very small study, however, involving only 15 adults with autism and Asperger syndrome.

For more about gold standard research, including the concepts of "randomized" and "double-blind" see our brief article here: http://www.iancommunity.org/cs/understanding_research/randomized_controlled_trials

Oxytocin increases retention of social cognition in autism: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16904652

This one was also based on just 15 adults with ASD. It was interesting here that everybody improved their "affective speech comprehension" after getting their medication, even those who got the placebo. Only those who got the oxytocin retained their improvement, however. Again, the study was small and provides, according to the authors, just "preliminary support for the use of oxytocin in the treatment of autism."

Intranasal oxytocin improves emotion recognition for youth with autism spectrum disorders: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19897177

This again was a well designed but very small study.

The upshot of all this is that oxytocin is not yet available as an autism treatment. The promising results from these initial studies will likely ensure that research continues, likely involving much larger trials.

One thing you can do if you are very interested in a certain research topic, and want to know what is going on with it even before new results are published, is write the researchers who have already published. Often, an e-mail is provided with the abstract, as in the ones I linked to above. Another great place to find out about some cutting-edge research (although it may not be replicated, that is, repeated and accepted yet), is by looking at the abstracts from the International Meeting For Autism Research (IMFAR) which is held once a year. They actually have the program booklet and abstracts online, and you can search through for the latest research on something you're interested in: http://www.autism-insar.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19&Itemid=82