When we engage in intimate social interactions, the “trust hormone” oxytocin likely plays a role—it is vital to building normal relationships. Even a synthetic version has been shown to boost feelings of security. Now increasing evidence suggests that oxytocin could also correct some of the interpersonal deficiencies experienced by those who have autism.
In a study published in February in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 13 high-functioning adults with autism played a computerized ball-tossing game with three fictitious characters. Some of the computer-controlled players behaved less cooperatively than others, and to succeed at the game, subjects needed to identify them and avoid passing them the ball. When given a placebo, those with autism could not differentiate among playmates. After the patients received oxytocin, however, their performance resembled that of people without autism—they favored the more cooperative players.
“Not only can people with autism socialize more under the effect of oxytocin, they can understand the behaviors of others and respond accordingly,” explains study co-author Angela Sirigu, director of research at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience in Bron, France.
Previous studies have found that oxytocin enhances autistic adults’ ability to comprehend emotions in speech and tamps down repetitive behaviors, another common symptom of the disorder. The compound also helps autistic children better discern people’s intentions by reading their eyes.
Although these studies are only proofs of principle—many more trials must happen before a drug could be approved—they suggest that oxytocin, if delivered soon after a diagnosis of autism, could help sway early social interactions in favor of more normal development. “We don’t have a lot of medications for the core symptoms of autism—arguably we have none,” says Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health. “So if this has any impact, you want to try it.”
This article was originally published with the title Hormonal Help for Autism.
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11 Comments
Add CommentHow would oxytocin treatment affect people's ability to respond appropriately to 'normal' unsafe conditions, for example, classrooms or city streets?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo those suffering any of the symptoms included in the definition of Autistic Spectrum Disorders exhibit clinically detectable shortfalls in oxytocin production or an excess in the numbers of brain receptors configured? If not, extra caution should be used in pursuing this treatment.
I would like to see a clinical study on autism using minocycline and very unusual broad spectrum antibiotic which has both neuro protective qualities and is an n-methy d-aspartate inhibitor as well as an anti pathogen agent. and has been shown in some studies to be effective on a broad range of mental illnesses which in truth may be the mis communication at the cellular level of the cognition, and memory coding sequences in the individuals mind. Autism to me has always seemed more a communications illness than a person with diminished intellect in fact these children may tbe some of the brightest and more emotionally sensitive and it is living in a world with people who are vastly less able to communicate or respond to un spoken input from others that forces them to look away and have some of the behavior that is more consistent with ptsd than a mental illness. One characteristic i see in most people with diagnosed autism is a very very high level of frustration which the onlooker attribute to the the fault of the child .. what if its the improper input for others . the minocycline possibly either treats and undiagnosed and non understood bacterial infection allowing the more standard brain communications or perhaps acts as and nmda inhibitor. I would also like to see some clinical trials using very effective agents like mk 801 in conjunction with the minocycline. one know action of the minocycline is the neuro protective ability through preventing the activation and proliferation of microglia (Minocycline, a tetracycline derivative, is neuroprotective against excitotoxicity by inhibiting activation and proliferation of microglia source
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this[HTML] from jneurosci.orgT Tikka, BL Fiebich, G Goldsteins, R … - Journal of …, 2001 - Soc NeuroscienceT Tikka, BL Fiebich, G Goldsteins, R … - Journal of …, 2001 - Soc Neuroscience and many other articles on clinical research i have read too numerous to list here . The micro glia oaspect was different form what can be found in a broad variety of work and should be looked at in addition to not as the primary focus of what i was saying.
I am just an artist and a high level amateur scientist but I think I see the big picture on some things in life and understand what is happening and not happening at times. i want to also talk about something that has been bothering me after seeing the broad number of illnesses that could now be benefiting from monocycline and are not for some reason i have to ask why and say if there appears to be a concerted and improper suppression of some of these study's by somebody possibly the major drug company's who would stand to lose billions in what amount to fake... sales if a standard older drug like this inexpensive one was found to have broad new effective property's which were vastly superior to the the expensive products out now, I understand the need to recoup research fees but the foolish acts of mismanagement is supposed to ensure the inefficient and wrong or outdated company's get replaced by newer more correct ones . The fact the old ....dogs want to stay and do the same tired dance the same way should not be surprising when contemplating human reactions and psycho-logical manifestations but should not be allowed to happen in the real world with real lives and quality of real human beings at stake. this should be considered criminal and jail terms meted out to the ceo's who make these profound and illegal choices in science and drug availabilities for the rest of humanity,.. our fda and others have been bought and paid for lap dogs for too many years.The treat of real jail time to both ceo and fda officia , to keep the science and the benefits to humans in the realm of reality to what is available. we have in effect maybe the cold blooded denial of treatment to millions of people by people with nothing but a money angle to justify thier inaction and actions. maybe its time people start going to the houses of the ceo's to personally tell them what they think of thier actions and show them a little real world verbal consequences for boorish and unsustainable actions and inaction's.Or peacefully and legally mass outside thier gated walls to show them reality when harming real people. what i see in the world is akin to before the French revolution with the modern cry of the bankers and big business telling the masses to eat fake instead of cake .. I am a man of peace but many in the world are not and they are indeed playing with real fire.. when it becomes apparent to the people they are going to be let to die or st starve by choice and mismanagement at the very top. History does repeat itself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisback 2 science minocycline also has noninflammatory aspects which in conjugation with suppressing or modifying some glutamate signaling also clarifies it according to this study . I have also read many articles dealing with ptsd and tbi which mention minocycline it may be most useful in a form of "cocktail " like use depending on the actual desired result somewhat like the potentiating factor of the aids drugs when used together. may also be useful in autism. and I wonder if you combined with oxytocin might set up conditions to where the brain can do some self healing using methods of plasticidy and either outright regeneration or rewiring the funtions to other brain locations just now stating to be understood as possible. one source DC Hess, SC Fagan - Pharmacotherapy, 2010 - PPI
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this... In this model, the arthritic syndrome was associated with suppression of MMP-2 (gelatinase)
activation obtained from the inflamed joints ... The proteolytic activity of tissue-plasminogen activator
enhances NMDA receptor- mediated signaling. ... Tetracycline and minocycline treatment ...
Related articles - All 2 versions
The reason glutame signaling chanels are so important is they are involved in the minds perceptions of fear, anxiety and pleasure when you are talking about human orgasm (TREATMENT OF FEMALE SEXUAL DYSFUNCTION BY COMPOUNDS THAT POSITIVELY MODULATE AMPA-TYPE GLUTAMATE RECEPTORS
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisD Simmons, G Lynch - US Patent App. 20,100/069,377, 2008 - freepatentsonline.com
... cerebro-spinal fluid) media, due to the voltage requirement for NMDA receptor channel activation,
but ... Glutamate pulses are applied and data are collected with a patch clamp amplifier and digitized ...
AMPA-type receptors can be administered to a subject, eg, a human patient, a ...
Cached - All 3 versions not the regular dopamine pleasure channels.) Why this is important is in the formation of memory and the amigdala which makes the call to bypass the frontal cortex and go strait to the autonomous system . autism may be the incomplete forming of memory's or disruption in the undertanding part of human speech through the two cranial nerves which conduct into the brain one dealing with speech the other with music and rhythmic sounds hence the musical savants ability when they have only one functioning maybe. . mostly likely due to improper gating of the glutamate chemical response most likely in my research in conjuction with some of the unwanted by products like quinnolinic acid in the breakdown of tryptophan under stressfal conditions . Q acid is implicated in many disieses like huntingtons ptsd and tramatic brain injury.one of many sources (n iontophoretic investigation of the actions of convulsant kynurenines and their interaction with the endogenous excitant quinolinic acid
MN Perkins, TW Stone - Brain Research, 1982 - Elsevier
Kynurenine and related compounds are endogenous metabolites of tryptophan which have previously
been found to be convulsant in animals. We now report that kynurenine, kynurenic acid, nicotinic
acid do not excite neurones in the cerebral cortex, but that quinolinic acid is an effective ...
Cited by 430 - Related articles - All 2 versions0 .communication and actual contualtion of brain injury by the continuing cascade of cortico steroids may effect autism mind to communicate or the memory incoding due to the cortico steroids present from if nothing else the frustration of not being able to be understood which is the characteristic I have observed in almost all of the autims patients I have talked ot in every day life not a clinical situation but more relaxed . perhaps a non addicting anti aniexy drug like busbar in the cocktail of drugs.
I'm just an old computer guy and amateur artist with no knowledge of minocycline, so I referred to:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minocycline
The 'Cautions' and 'Side Effects' look pretty scary, based on my experiences with long term interferon and rebetrol therapy which also has serious side effects. Having self experimented with interferon injections to treat basal cell carcinoma (based on some research done primarily outside the U.S.), if you are by any chance self experimenting with minocycline, based on the serious potential effects I'd strongly advise you to stop (I eventually followed the prescribed surgical treatment).
I empathize with your view of pharmaceutical companies' profit directed product offerings. However, they must also avoid product safety liability issues in their offerings (also in the interest of profits).
By the way, I think you meant 'threat' rather than 'treat of real jail time'.
You might find some of my unintended medication effects explained in a comment to a current article to be of particular interest:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=its-not-dementia-its-your-heart-medication
Jdwyer, thanx 4 correctin my spelin.. eye am dyslex=hick oh and any one who uses wikky-pedia az a scine-tiffff-hihick source iz lazy oar crazy .. all drugs come with efects and side effects inteeelli-gent bioli-jist no dat you have to look up the pharmacology and ways that an actual drug interacts in the human body to understand toxicity. Eye-ronically 4 you whut iz a side effect and unwanted 4 1 could be the cure 4 another whose body actually needed what the medication could do. hence my point wich waz eye suszpect weelll over your computer science da-greee .. but i appreciate you trying 2 teach me some of your larnnnnein ... oh and are you a plant for the drug co. to spead disinformation. I listed actual professional journaels and studies as my uhhhh sources. not wicccccy-pedia where any1 can put anythang they want true or false ... it jest don't matter 2 them peoples ....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo, don't take it personal. I got my high school GED in Viet Nam & then took 2 months to learn computer programming. That's my education, aside from some short technical classes during my 32 year career. I retired with congestive heart failure & other ailments, so I don't have a lot of energy but I can think clearly again. If you had read the article comments I point you to you'd know I'm no plant for the pharmaceutical companies. Do you think I'd discuss self experimentation with interferon injections as an unauthorized cancer treatment if I was? Lighten up and just take care of yourself - I was only trying to help.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thispeace bro.... i am disabled by ptsd and pannic attacks ( from a very traumatic car wreck in which the people were torn apart by my work truck when they ran a stop sign and other very non standard very real life things) this was my sense of humour trying to correct incorrect info on the antibiotic my only dog in this fight i apologize 4 incorrectly wondering about your honesty my bad.. we both i suspect no we are not dr's. and would advise others to either know your science if advocating and treating yourself or use medical professionals. I have found I am far more intelligent than my dr.s and have a complex case with combination of past bacterial infection and abscess close 2 my brain and the cascade of neurotransmitters caused by ptsd which effects the human immune system response. It is possibly because I look at both ptsd and tbi I see the overlap in some of the things along the glutamate channeling lines which effect parkinsons. traumatic brain injury or tbi, ptsd and several of the so called auto-immune disiese which if you are using interferon you must have some component of. my father was a real research scientist and I had my first microscope and chemistry set with real chemicals when i was in elementary school I am just now realizing how different that was and the continuing education in college is and was. knowledge is something available to all with the internet i do insist on professional journals and study's for mine. I assume since you do your own advocacy that you understand how powerful a tool google scholor is if you simply use the correct scientific words which can be searched on regular google. my prayers and hopes for your conditions to improve. Autism has some of these same mis communications in the neuron communications. Oxytocin which is the component which caused labor to be induced in pregnant women in addition to being a hormone of other uses may be one of the componets which switch the babys immune systme on at birth with the components of colostrum the first milk of the mother. Autims in many study is suspected to be some kind of imune system malfunction first incorrectly linked with thimerisol in the vaccinations. what if it wasn't the mecury but the actual mumps vaccine which caused the swelling in the area of the cranial nerves that deal with communication and speech when they travel through the choke points in the skull and jaw. this could cause intermittent intercommunication is some of what I experienced with a pari-tonsilar abscess that wrapped around my jugular vein
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI halso had a life thretening abcess of a wisdom tooth several years ago when i had gone back to college. I have often wondered what the effect of giving the mumps vaccine to a child that either alreay had the real mumps or was infected at the time of imuninization the chances of this causing serious problems may be greater than the mercury and the timing of onset of infant symptoms is the something that can't be discarded> It would only take a small amount of inflammation and swelling to choke or kink the cranial nerve functions and would not be readily seen by x-ray MRI or cat scan because the area is normally filled it is the pressure that you cant see from the swelling. Autism children often have high levels of the blood test for inflammation manifested in high white blood counts with high netrophils... and other blood test. the same I get and got with the serious abscess... hmmmm I am purposely sometime a smart a$$ to hopefully shake up some of the scientific genie- asses to look out of thier narrow field to see a bigger picture so they can go where i have no desire to do the research on but clearly see the path many times. I am an artist but I know my science.... is pissed my father off to no end but i am what eye am
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou're doing great job as near as I can tell - I'm just a pretty regular pedestrian who has had a few run-ins, especially heart failure induced high pressure inflation of my abdomen preventing the diaphragm from extending into the abdomen, seriously interfering with breathing, CHF leaving cellular waste fluid in my lungs causing coughing when reclining and of course eating was virtually impossible since it aggravated the abdominal pressure. It only took 3 months for my third cardiologist to subscribe a standard CHF treatment - a beta blocker (epinephrine/adrenaline flooding) which effectively 'cured' me overnight. I also tried some clonazepam right at the end, which helped with the then raging anxiety due to not being able to breathe, eat or sleep.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut aside from other relatively minor issues (the consequences of a long stressful life) I'm back to doing pretty good - great on short trips.
I did have some curious condition 2 months ago - severe double vision in the lower half of my field of vision due to a eye muscle palsy, which could (only?) be caused by swelling pressure on some nerves running into the brain (I've forgotten all the correct terminology and too lazy, sorry). After MRI brain scans (now on my PC) & other tests I was advised to wait & see - sure enough after 1 month with the condition, over the next month it gradually cleared up completely.
My 10 yr. old grandson is diagnosed with Ausberger Syndrome, but really smart. I think all the males on my paternal side would have also qualified but we were too early.
The point of all this is that I'm relatively fine, but I have had enough exposure to conditions related to some of yours that I at least can empathize. If I can help in some way try me at rocketmail.com. You seem to be doing good on your own, but you never know...