Intranasal oxytocin: miracle cure after trauma?

Background: In popular media and on Internet, the neuropeptide oxytocin is often advertised as a miracle drug that cures all types of disorders, reduces stress, saves marriages, all conveniently with a nasal spray. Here we will present the effects of intranasal oxytocin on brain function in recently traumatized individuals and patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and discuss clinical implications and further research. PTSD is characterized by exaggerated fear responses to threat and trauma-related stimuli, reflected in altered neural salience processing and emotion regulation (Koch et al., 2014). In addition, many PTSD patients report anhedonia, emotional numbing, and social detachment, reflected in decreased reward sensitivity (Nawijn et al., 2015). Interestingly, dysregulations in these domains also appear to be associated with increased PTSD risk upon trauma exposure and treatment non-response. Currently, there still is a high need for development of effective preventive interventions for PTSD, that can be administered early after trauma, as well as a need for novel adjuvant interventions that augment treatment response to evidence-based psychotherapy for PTSD (i.e., medication-enhanced psychotherapy [MEP]) (see also Hendriks & De Kleine, 2015). In 2011, we received a large grant (ZonMW TOP) to perform a series of functional neuroimaging studies on the effects of a single intranasal administration of the neuropeptide oxytocin on neural emotional and reward processing in PTSD patients versus healthy traumatized controls, and in recently traumatized individuals at high risk for PTSD due to high levels of distress acutely after trauma