Anorexia: Could 'Cuddle Hormone' Help Treat Health Issue?

Could oxytocin-otherwise known as the "love hormone"-help treat eating disorders?

According to two recent studies, the hormone works by altering anorexic patients' tendencies to fixate on body image, as well as calorie and food intake.

"Patients with anorexia have a range of social difficulties which often start in their early teenage years, before the onset of the illness. These social problems, which can result in isolation, may be important in understanding both the onset and maintenance of anorexia. By using oxytocin as a potential treatment for anorexia, we are focusing on some of these underlying problems we see in patients," said senior author Professor Janet Treasure from King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, via a press release.

These were conducted to test the hormone and treatment options. The first, published in the journal journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, involved 31 patients and 33 healthy controls. All participants were either given a dose of oxytocin or a placebo via nasal spray.

Participants were also asked to look at a series of images related to healthy and unhealthy foods, images of fat and thin body shapes and weight. Researchers noted how quickly participants identified images and how they felt about them. For instance, they found that those who focused on negative images tended to identify them more rapidly.

Findings showed that anorexics showed a reduction via "attentional bias" on pictures of food and body parts following use of the nasal spray.

The second study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, then studied the same participants' reactions to facial expressions, including disgust, anger or happiness. Findings showed that after the spray injection, they were less likely to focus on certain images-including those of disgust.

"Our research shows that oxytocin reduces patients' unconscious tendencies to focus on food, body shape, and negative emotions such as disgust. There is currently a lack of effective pharmacological treatments for anorexia. Our research adds important evidence to the increasing literature on oxytocin treatments for mental illnesses, and hints at the advent of a novel, ground-breaking treatment option for patients with anorexia," said lead author of both studies Prof Youl-Ri Kim, from the University in Seoul, South Korea, via the release.

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