This is an abridged version of the article from the May 2013 issue of the magazine.
At a think tank meeting about autism several years ago, molecular geneticist Simon Gregory spoke with mainstream and nonconventional doctors about oxytocin, the so-called love hormone that some doctors were using to treat symptoms of social disconnection in children with autism.
Asking for a show of hands, Gregory was stunned to see that about a fifth of the attendees were supplying oxytocin nasal sprays to their young patients. Yet safety data were scanty, and it was pretty evident there wasnt any standard of care for autism, Gregory says. Some people were using once a day, others twice. There was no metric of successful treatment. Its the Wild West.
In one of the few studies that tested oxytocin beyond a single dose, neurologist Evdokia Anagnostou at the Bloorview Research Institute in Toronto gave intranasal oxytocin to 10 high-functioning adults with autism, and a placebo to nine others, twice daily for six weeks.
Participants who took oxytocin showed no ill effects and exhibited modest reductions in some repetitive behaviors compared with those on the placebo. They were also 20 percent better at reading emotions in pictures of eyes.
But oxytocin had no effect on measures of social communication or obsessive-compulsive behaviors. Were not talking about curing autism, Anagnostou cautions. The problem with autism is that its a collection of disorders. Were saying theres one symptom domain that we may be able to improve.
The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), developed by University of Cambridge psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues, is commonly used in studies of autism. It measures one area of social impairment: a persons ability to perceive other peoples mental states as communicated by their eyes. Take the test to see how well you can read emotions in eyes.
See the rest here:
Can Oxytocin Treat Autism ?