title: Potential of Oxytocin in the Treatment of Schizophrenia.
abstract: Schizophrenia is a heterogeneous, debilitating disorder characterized by three distinct sets of clinical features: positive symptoms, negative symptoms, and cognitive deficits. Extant antipsychotic drugs have been most successful at treating the positive symptoms of patients with schizophrenia but have minimal therapeutic effects on negative symptoms and cognitive deficits, which are the symptoms that best predict the poor prognosis of these patients. Therefore, there has been a major effort towards identifying compounds that alleviate these symptoms. Oxytocin (OT) is a nonapeptide that regulates peripheral reproductive-relevant functions, and also acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain. Converging evidence from both preclinical and clinical research suggests that OT may have therapeutic efficacy for the positive symptoms, negative symptoms, and cognitive deficits of schizophrenia. In the majority of the small, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials conducted to date, OT has shown particular promise in its potential to treat the intractable negative symptoms and social cognitive deficits exhibited by most of the patients with this debilitating disorder. In this leading article, we summarize the clinical evidence relevant to (1) endogenous OT and schizophrenia, and (2) the putative therapeutic effects of OT on each of the three clinical domains.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA, 92093, USA.
authors.forename: Paul D
authors.initials: PD
authors.lastname: Shilling
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego Medical Center, 200 West Arbor Drive, San Diego, CA, 92103-8218, USA. dfeifel@ucsd.edu.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Feifel
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D014150:Antipsychotic Agents / Q000494:pharmacology* / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D001921:Brain / Q000187:drug effects; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000188:drug therapy; D006801:Humans; D010121:Oxytocin / Q000494:pharmacology* / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000188:drug therapy*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology
chemical_list: D014150:Antipsychotic Agents; D010121:Oxytocin