I would like to know the correlation between CSF and peripheral venous blood concentrations after acute administrations through various pathway such as injection, nasal spray, sublingual as well as the correlation between the two compartments after long term administrations through those pathways. I am planning a trial of long term oxytocin and would like to know more about the metabolism of oxytocin within the CNS and in the peripheral.
Kagerbauer, S. M.; J. Martin; T. Schuster; M. Blobner; E. F. Kochs and R. Landgraf. 2013. "Plasma Oxytocin and Vasopressin Do Not Predict Neuropeptide Concentrations in Human Cerebrospinal Fluid." J Neuroendocrinol, 25(7), 668-73.
Clark, C. L.; N. St John; A. M. Pasca; S. A. Hyde; K. Hornbeak; M. Abramova; H. Feldman; K. J. Parker and A. A. Penn. 2013. "Neonatal Csf Oxytocin Levels Are Associated with Parent Report of Infant Soothability and Sociability." Psychoneuroendocrinology, 38(7), 1208-12.
Winslow, J. T. 2005. "Neuropeptides and Non-Human Primate Social Deficits Associated with Pathogenic Rearing Experience." Int J Dev Neurosci, 23(2-3), 245-51.
While this doesn't directly answer your question, there's a nice review article (and meta-analysis) of the use of intranasal oxytocin in autism (and other conditions). See attached. It has some useful background and references, such as this:
Animal studies have shown that OT is involved in lactation and the onset of maternal behavior.9, 10 Recent research also suggests an important role of OT in human caregiving.11 Higher maternal OT levels across pregnancy predict higher quality of postpartum maternal behavior.12 In pregnant women, lower plasma OT levels in mid-gestation are predictive of postnatal depression.13 More generally, depressive symptomatology has been found related to lower plasma OT levels,14, 15 although not consistently so.16 Similarly, in patients with schizophrenia, plasma OT levels were found to be lower than in non-clinical subjects, and they correlated negatively with psychotic symptoms.17, 18 Patients with Prader–Willi syndrome were reported to have a deficit in the OT-producing neurons of the paraventricular nuclei.19 The idea to use OT administration in the treatment of these clinical groups is thus not far-fetched.
Miller, M., Bales, K. L., Taylor, S. L., Yoon, J., Hostetler, C. M., Carter, C. S. and Solomon, M. (2013), Oxytocin and Vasopressin in Children and Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorders: Sex Differences and Associations With Symptoms. Autism Res, 6: 91–102
No, no-one has done this yet to my knowledge, although there is a group at Stanford planning a study on this - the details are here: http://biox.stanford.edu/grant/r6_iip_parker.html
Only last week, I saw a conference poster presenting evidence that CSF and plasma oxytocin levels are correlated in human neurological patients. The sample size was small (N = 16) but the data was convinving. This work was conducted by Lefevre, Mottolese, Mottolese, Merhoum and Sirigu. Not sure if they have published the data yet.
Thanks Angeliki, I am aware of this group in France. Do you have their email contact?
An important study publised in 2013 by Vanessa Hanking and colleagues:
Title: Elevated cerebrospinal fluid and blood concentrations of oxytocin following its intranasal administration in humans
Abstract:
There has been an unprecedented interest in the modulatory effects of intranasal oxytocin on human social cognition and behaviour, however as yet no study has actually demonstrated that this modality of administration increases concentrations of the peptide in the brain as well as blood in humans. Here using combined blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) sampling in subjects receiving either 24 IU of oxytocin (n = 11) or placebo (n = 4) we have shown that oxytocin levels significantly increased in both plasma and CSF. However, whereas oxytocin plasma concentrations peaked at 15 min after intranasal administration and decreased after 75 min, CSF concentrations took up to 75 min to reach a significant level. Moreover, there was no correlation (r
We are planning to publish the data presented in Bristol soon (the abstract should be available at vasopressin.org), but what I can already tell is that the correlation is not that strong (r=0.5), so, at best, plasma oxytocin is a useful information but you can't fully rely on it.
Ultimately, this question is hard to resolve because of the discrepancies between techniques (see szeto et al. 2011).
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