Pitocin is a prescription injectable medication containing oxytocin, used to induce or strengthen labor by stimulating uterine contractions. It is administered intravenously and manufactured by Endo USA, Inc. This information was generated using AI and is provided for informational and research purposes only.

Abstract: Affectionate touch, which is vital for mental and physical health, was restricted during the Covid-19 pandemic. This study investigated the association between momentary affectionate touch and subjective well-being, as well as salivary oxytocin and cortisol in everyday life during the pandemic. In the first step, we measured anxiety and depression symptoms, loneliness, and attitude toward social touch in a large cross-sectional online survey (N=1,050). From this sample, N=247 participants completed ecologically momentary assessments (EMA) over two days with six daily assessments by answering smartphone-based questions on affectionate touch and momentary mental state and providing concomitant saliva samples for cortisol and oxytocin assessment. Multilevel models showed that on a within-person level, affectionate touch was associated with decreased self-reported anxiety, general burden, stress, and increased oxytocin levels. On a between-person level, affectionate touch was associated with decreased cortisol levels and higher happiness. Moreover, individuals with a positive attitude towards social touch experiencing loneliness reported more mental health problems. Our results suggest that affectionate touch is linked to higher endogenous oxytocin in times of pandemic and lockdown and might buffer stress on a subjective and hormonal level. These findings might have implications for preventing mental burden during social contact restrictions.

This study examined oxytocin expression in experimental models of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and evaluated the therapeutic potential of treatment with oxytocin. They investigated changes in oxytocin expression in APP/PS1 mouse model and developed a chronic intranasal treatment protocol to increase oxytocin levels in the brain. Then, tested oxytocin as a potential approach to attenuate microglial activation and reverse memory deficits. This dataset includes source data used to assemble different figures in the publication. The source data contains data about hypothalamic expression of oxytocin is reduced in AD models, chronic intranasal administration of oxytocin increases hippocampal oxytocin and attenuates fear response in mice, cellular and molecular impact of intranasal oxytocin in APP/PS1 mouse brains, oxytocin attenuates AβO-induced microglial activation in vitro, and intranasal oxytocin reverses social and non-social memory deficits in aged APP/PS1 mice.

The Oxytocin Market Report is Segmented by Indication (Antepartum, Postpartum), Route of Administration (Parenteral, Intranasal, Oromucosal), Distribution Channel (Hospital Pharmacies, Retail Pharmacies, Online Pharmacies), and Geography (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa, South America). The Market Forecasts are Provided in Terms of Value (USD).

It has been demonstrated that secretion of several hormones can be classically conditioned, however, the underlying brain responses of such conditioning have never been investigated before. In this study we aimed to investigate how oxytocin administration and classically conditioned oxytocin influence brain responses. In total, 88 females were allocated to one of three groups: oxytocin administration, conditioned oxytocin, or placebo, and underwent an experiment consisting of three acquisition and three evocation days. Participants in the conditioned group received 24 IU of oxytocin together with a conditioned stimulus (CS) during three acquisition days and placebo with the CS on three evocation days. The oxytocin administration group received 24 IU of oxytocin and the placebo group received placebo during all days. On the last evocation day, fMRI scanning was performed for all participants during three tasks previously shown to be affected by oxytocin: presentation of emotional faces, crying baby sounds and heat pain. Region of interest analysis revealed that there was significantly lower activation in the right amygdala and in two clusters in the left superior temporal gyrus in the oxytocin administration group compared to the placebo group in response to observing fearful faces. The activation in the conditioned oxytocin group was in between the other two groups for these clusters but did not significantly differ from either group. No group differences were found in the other tasks. Preliminary evidence was found for brain activation of a conditioned oxytocin response; however, despite this trend in the expected direction, the conditioned group did not significantly differ from other groups. Future research should, therefore, investigate the optimal timing of conditioned endocrine responses and study whether the findings generalize to other hormones as well.

The dataset contains the files (DARE_Workfile, Empathy_Workfile) used for the analyses of the study published by Fragkaki and Cima (2019) in Psychoneuroendocrinology. The study examined the effect of oxytocin administration on empathy and emotion recognition in 100 male adolescents living in residential youth care facilities. The study had a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject design. The study included 3 sessions: screening session and two experimental sessions. In the experimental sessions, the participants received oxytocin in one session and placebo in the other session and performed the same experimental tasks on empathy and emotion recognition 30 min after administration. The order of the sprays as well as the order of the tasks were randomized using computer randomization. We performed mixed modeling to examined the effect of oxytocin on the outcome variables. The file “Documentation-ReadMe” describes the trial information, methodology, and the variables included in the datasets. The file "icu_dutch" is the Dutch version of the Inventory of callous-unemotional traits, the file ctq_dutch" is the Dutch version of the Childhood trauma questionnaire", and the file "ades_dutch" is the Dutch version of the Adolescent dissociative experiences scale.

Abstract Domestication is of unquestionable importance to the technological revolution that has given rise to modern human societies. In this study, we analyzed the DNA and protein sequences of six genes of the oxytocin and arginine vasopressin systems (OXT-OXTR; AVP-AVPR1a, AVPR1b and AVPR2) in 40 placental mammals. These systems play an important role in the control of physiology and behavior. According to our analyses, neutrality does not explain the pattern of molecular evolution found in some of these genes. We observed specific sites under positive selection in AVPR1b (ω = 1.429, p = 0.001) and AVPR2 (ω= 1.49, p = 0.001), suggesting that they could be involved in behavior and physiological changes, including those related to the domestication process. Furthermore, AVPR1a, which plays a role in social behavior, is under relaxed selective constraint in domesticated species. These results provide new insights into the nature of the domestication process and its impact on the OXT-AVP system.

The Oxytocin Market size was valued at USD 4.07 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach USD 8.89 billion by 2032, exhibiting a CAGR of 11.8 % during the forecasts period.

Oxytocin is an endogenous neuropeptide hormone that influences social behaviour and bonding in mammals. Variations in oxytocin receptor (OXTR) expression may play a role in the social deficits seen in autism spectrum disorder. Previous studies from our laboratory found a dense population of OXTR in the human substantia nigra (SN), a basal ganglia structure in the midbrain that is important in both movement and reward pathways. Here, we explore whether differences in OXTR can be identified in the dopaminergic SN pars compacta of individuals with autism. Postmortem human brain tissue specimens were processed for OXTR receptor autoradiography from four groups: males with autism, females with autism, typically developing (TD) males and TD females. We found that females with autism had significantly lower levels of OXTR than the other groups. To examine potential gene expression differences, we performed in situ hybridization in adjacent slides to visualize and quantify OXTR mRNA as well as mRNA for tyrosine hydroxylase. We found no differences in mRNA levels for either gene across the four groups. These results suggest that a dysregulation in local OXTR protein translation or increased OXTR internalization/recycling may contribute to the differences in social symptoms seen in females with autism.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Interplays between oxytocin and other neuromodulators in shaping complex social behaviours’.

Main effect for healthy controls on oxytocin

Collection description

Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over design to compare the impacts of a single intranasal oxytocin dose on amygdala connectivity among individuals with schizophrenia (n = 22) versus healthy controls (n = 24).

Subject species

homo sapiens

Modality

fMRI-BOLD

Analysis level

group

Cognitive paradigm (task)

rest eyes closed

Map type

Z

The implementation of an institutional oxytocin checklist did not affect expert assessment of the use of oxytocin in labor. Checklist is included within the publication's appendix.

This dataset accompanies the research article "Oxytocin signaling regulates maternally-directed behavior during early life". It includes Matlab data structures for each of the figures in the article. Within each structure are entries for each panel in the figure, including all data points presented in the panel. Panels that do not include any quantitative data (for example images) are also associated with entries in the matlab structures, but these entries are empty.

Breastfeeding behaviors can significantly change mothers’ physiological and psychological states. The hormone oxytocin may mediate breastfeeding and mothers’ emotion recognition. This study examined the effects of endogenous oxytocin fluctuation via breastfeeding on emotion recognition in 51 primiparous mothers. Saliva oxytocin was assessed before and after the manipulation (breastfeeding or holding an infant), and emotion recognition tasks were conducted. Among mothers who breastfed daily, mothers with more increased levels of oxytocin after breastfeeding showed greater reduced negative recognition and enhanced positive recognition of adult facial expressions. These oxytocin functions accompanying breastfeeding may support continued nurturing behaviors and also affect the general social cognition of other adults beyond any specific effect on infants.

This pathway shows a high-level overview of oxytocin signalling.

Introduction

This note describes the data sets used for all analyses contained in the manuscript 'Oxytocin - a social peptide?’[1] that is currently under review.

Data Collection

The data sets described here were originally retrieved from Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection via the University of Edinburgh’s library subscription [2]. The aim of the original study for which these data were gathered was to survey peer-reviewed primary studies on oxytocin and social behaviour. To capture relevant papers, we used the following query:

TI = (“oxytocin” OR “pitocin” OR “syntocinon”) AND TS = (“social*” OR “pro$social” OR “anti$social”)

The final search was performed on the 13 September 2021. This returned a total of 2,747 records, of which 2,049 were classified by WoS as ‘articles’. Given our interest in primary studies only – articles reporting original data – we excluded all other document types. We further excluded all articles sub-classified as ‘book chapters’ or as ‘proceeding papers’ in order to limit our analysis to primary studies published in peer-reviewed academic journals. This reduced the set to 1,977 articles. All of these were published in the English language, and no further language refinements were unnecessary.

All available metadata on these 1,977 articles was exported as plain text ‘flat’ format files in four batches, which we later merged together via Notepad++. Upon manually examination, we discovered examples of papers classified as ‘articles’ by WoS that were, in fact, reviews. To further filter our results, we searched all available PMIDs in PubMed (1,903 had associated PMIDs - ~96% of set). We then filtered results to identify all records classified as ‘review’, ‘systematic review’, or ‘meta-analysis’, identifying 75 records 3. After examining a sample and agreeing with the PubMed classification, these were removed these from our dataset - leaving a total of 1,902 articles.

From these data, we constructed two datasets via parsing out relevant reference data via the Sci2 Tool [4]. First, we constructed a ‘node-attribute-list’ by first linking unique reference strings (‘Cite Me As’ column in WoS data files) to unique identifiers, we then parsed into this dataset information on the identify of a paper, including the title of the article, all authors, journal publication, year of publication, total citations as recorded from WoS, and WoS accession number. Second, we constructed an ‘edge-list’ that records the citations from a citing paper in the ‘Source’ column and identifies the cited paper in the ‘Target’ column, using the unique identifies as described previously to link these data to the node-attribute-list.

We then constructed a network in which papers are nodes, and citation links between nodes are directed edges between nodes. We used Gephi Version 0.9.2 [5] to manually clean these data by merging duplicate references that are caused by different reference formats or by referencing errors. To do this, we needed to retain both all retrieved records (1,902) as well as including all of their references to papers whether these were included in our original search or not. In total, this produced a network of 46,633 nodes (unique reference strings) and 112,520 edges (citation links). Thus, the average reference list size of these articles is ~59 references. The mean indegree (within network citations) is 2.4 (median is 1) for the entire network reflecting a great diversity in referencing choices among our 1,902 articles.

After merging duplicates, we then restricted the network to include only articles fully retrieved (1,902), and retrained only those that were connected together by citations links in a large interconnected network (i.e. the largest component). In total, 1,892 (99.5%) of our initial set were connected together via citation links, meaning a total of ten papers were removed from the following analysis – and these were neither connected to the largest component, nor did they form connections with one another (i.e. these were ‘isolates’).

This left us with a network of 1,892 nodes connected together by 26,019 edges. It is this network that is described by the ‘node-attribute-list’ and ‘edge-list’ provided here. This network has a mean in-degree of 13.76 (median in-degree of 4). By restricting our analysis in this way, we lose 44,741 unique references (96%) and 86,501 citations (77%) from the full network, but retain a set of articles tightly knitted together, all of which have been fully retrieved due to possessing certain terms related to oxytocin AND social behaviour in their title, abstract, or associated keywords.

Before moving on, we calculated indegree for all nodes in this network – this counts the number of citations to a given paper from other papers within this network – and have included this in the node-attribute-list. We further clustered this network via modularity maximisation via the Leiden algorithm [6]. We set the algorithm to resolution 1, and allowed the algorithm to run over 100 iterations and 100 restarts. This gave Q=0.43 and identified seven clusters, which we describe in detail within the body of the paper. We have included cluster membership as an attribute in the node-attribute-list.

Data description

We include here two datasets: (i) ‘OTSOC-node-attribute-list.csv’ consists of the attributes of 1,892 primary articles retrieved from WoS that include terms indicating a focus on oxytocin and social behaviour; (ii) ‘OTSOC-edge-list.csv’ records the citations between these papers. Together, these can be imported into a range of different software for network analysis; however, we have formatted these for ease of upload into Gephi 0.9.2. Below, we detail their contents:

1. ‘OTSOC-node-attribute-list.csv’ is a comma-separate values file that contains all node attributes for the citation network (n=1,892) analysed in the paper. The columns refer to:

Id, the unique identifier

Label, the reference string of the paper to which the attributes in this row correspond. This is taken from the ‘Cite Me As’ column from the original WoS download. The reference string is in the following format: last name of first author, publication year, journal, volume, start page, and DOI (if available).

Wos_id, unique Web of Science (WoS) accession number. These can be used to query WoS to find further data on all papers via the ‘UT= ’ field tag.

Title, paper title.

Authors, all named authors.

Journal, journal of publication.

Pub_year, year of publication.

Wos_citations, total number of citations recorded by WoS Core Collection to a given paper as of 13 September 2021

Indegree, the number of within network citations to a given paper, calculated for the network shown in Figure 1 of the manuscript.

Cluster, provides the cluster membership number as discussed within the manuscript (Figure 1). This was established via modularity maximisation via the Leiden algorithm (Res 1; Q=0.43|7 clusters)

1. ‘OTSOC-edge -list.csv’ is a comma-separate values file that contains all citation links between the 1,892 articles (n=26,019). The columns refer to:

Source, the unique identifier of the citing paper.

Target, the unique identifier of the cited paper.

Type, edges are ‘Directed’, and this column tells Gephi to regard all edges as such.

Syr_date, this contains the date of publication of the citing paper.

Tyr_date, this contains the date of publication of the cited paper.

Software recommended for analysis

Gephi version 0.9.2 was used for the visualisations within the manuscript, and both files can be read and into Gephi without modification.

Notes

[1] Leng, G., Leng, R. I., Ludwig, M. (Submitted). Oxytocin – a social peptide? Deconstructing the evidence.

[2] Edinburgh University’s subscription to Web of Science covers the following databases: (i) Science Citation Index Expanded, 1900-present; (ii) Social Sciences Citation Index, 1900-present; (iii) Arts & Humanities Citation Index, 1975-present; (iv) Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Science, 1990-present; (v) Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Social Science & Humanities, 1990-present; (vi) Book Citation Index– Science, 2005-present; (vii) Book Citation Index– Social Sciences & Humanities, 2005-present; (viii) Emerging Sources Citation Index, 2015-present.

[3] For those interested, the following PMIDs were identified as ‘articles’ by WoS, but as ‘reviews’ by PubMed: ‘34502097’ ‘33400920’ ‘32060678’ ‘31925983’ ‘31734142’ ‘30496762’ ‘30253045’ ‘29660735’ ‘29518698’ ‘29065361’ ‘29048602’ ‘28867943’ ‘28586471’ ‘28301323’ ‘27974283’ ‘27626613’ ‘27603523’ ‘27603327’ ‘27513442’ ‘27273834’ ‘27071789’ ‘26940141’ ‘26932552’ ‘26895254’ ‘26869847’ ‘26788924’ ‘26581735’ ‘26548910’ ‘26317636’ ‘26121678’ ‘26094200’ ‘25997760’ ‘25631363’ ‘25526824’ ‘25446893’ ‘25153535’ ‘25092245’ ‘25086828’ ‘24946432’ ‘24637261’ ‘24588761’ ‘24508579’ ‘24486356’ ‘24462936’ ‘24239932’ ‘24239931’ ‘24231551’ ‘24216134’ ‘23955310’ ‘23856187’ ‘23686025’ ‘23589638’ ‘23575742’ ‘23469841’ ‘23055480’ ‘22981649’ ‘22406388’ ‘22373652’ ‘22141469’ ‘21960250’ ‘21881219’ ‘21802859’ ‘21714746’ ‘21618004’ ‘21150165’ ‘20435805’ ‘20173685’ ‘19840865’ ‘19546570’ ‘19309413’ ‘15288368’ ‘12359512’ ‘9401603’ ‘9213136’ ‘7630585’

[4] Sci2 Team. (2009). Science of Science (Sci2) Tool. Indiana University and SciTech Strategies. Stable URL: https://sci2.cns.iu.edu

[5] Bastian, M., Heymann, S., & Jacomy, M. (2009).

The Oxytocin Market will grow from USD 1.55 Billion in 2025 to USD 2.31 Billion by 2031 at a 6.91% CAGR.

10 Global import shipment records of Oxytocin with prices, volume & current Buyer's suppliers relationships based on actual Global export trade database.

The neurohormone oxytocin regulates many aspects of physiology primarily by binding to its receptor, the oxytocin receptor. The oxytocin receptor gene (Oxtr) has been shown to have alternative transcripts in the mouse brain which may each have different biological functions or be used in specific contexts. A popular animal model for studying oxytocin-dependent social behaviors is the prairie vole, a biparental and monogamous rodent. Alternative transcriptional capacity of Oxtr in prairie voles is unknown. We used 5′ rapid amplification of cDNA ends to identify alternative Oxtr transcription start sites in prairie vole brain tissue and uterine tissue. We then validated expression of specific transcripts in fetal brains and assessed the impact of exogenous oxytocin administration in utero on offspring brain development. We identified seven distinct Oxtr transcripts, all of which are present in both brain and uterine tissue. We then demonstrated that maternal oxytocin administration alters expression of a specific subset of Oxtr transcripts and that these different transcripts are under unique epigenetic regulation, such that in the perinatal period only one of the alternative transcripts is associated with DNA methylation in the Oxtr promoter. These data establish the existence of multiple Oxtr transcripts in prairie vole brain and uterine tissue and implicate oxytocin in the regulation of alternative transcript expression. These data have significant implications for our understanding of null mutant models in both mice and voles and translation in human birth and behavior.

Oxytocin (OXT) (OT) - BioCentury Target Profiles for the biopharma industry

This study examined the interaction of acetylcholine (ACh) and oxytocin (OXT) at slow and fast timescales during various brain states. They used simultaneous fiber-photometric measurements of ACh and OXT variations in the hippocampus using G-protein-coupled receptor activation-based Ach and OXT sensors. These optical measurements were compared with sleep-wake changes and characteristic brain-state-dependent fine timescale changes of neuronal activity, including theta, gamma oscillations, SPW-Rs, sleep spindles, and population spike synchrony. Consecutively, they investigated the direction of neuromodulation-network pattern relationships by optogenetic control of ACh and OXT neurons. The dataset includes electrophysiology and sensor imaging data.