Can Oxytocin Enhance Social Affiliation in Schizophrenia?

Abstract

Schizophrenia is a chronic, persistent, and severe mental illness characterized by deficits in cognition in addition to the well-established positive and negative symptoms. Impairment in cognition has been a keen area of research that has received a lot of attention in the last two decades. Several cognitive domains, including social cognition, are impaired in schizophrenia. Social cognition in schizophrenia is a rapidly emerging and major focus of schizophrenia research since deficits in various domains of social cognition lead to poorer outcomes and functioning. Although antipsychotic medications are effective in treating the positive and to some extent negative symptoms of schizophrenia, no pharmacological agents currently exist that are approved for treatment of impairment in social cognition associated with schizophrenia. Several studies have shown that oxytocin, a neurohormone, improves social affiliations in schizophrenia. Meta-analyses of such studies have demonstrated beneficial effect of oxytocin in the treatment of social cognitive impairments in schizophrenia in addition to having some adjunctive value in treating positive and negative symptoms. The role of oxytocin as an adjunct in the treatment of schizophrenia is based on the premise that oxytocin may have some role in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia in conjunction with several neurotransmitters. This review focuses on bringing the reader up-to-date on the subject with the main focus being on the latest research findings.