RESEARCH ARTICLE
Sex-Related Differences in Plasma Oxytocin Levels in Humans
Donatella Marazziti1, *, Stefano Baroni1, Federico Mucci1, Armando Piccinni1, Ilenia Moroni1, Gino Giannaccini2, Claudia Carmassi1, Enrico Massimetti3, Liliana Dell’Osso1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2019Volume: 15
First Page: 58
Last Page: 63
Publisher ID: CPEMH-15-58
DOI: 10.2174/1745017901915010058
Article History:
Received Date: 23/01/2019Revision Received Date: 19/02/2019
Acceptance Date: 22/02/2019
Electronic publication date: 26/03/2019
Collection year: 2019
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Increasing evidence supports a key role of Oxytocin (OT) as a modulator of social relationships in mammals.
Objective:
The aim of the present study was to investigate possible sex-related differences in plasma OT levels in human beings.
Methods:
Forty-five healthy men and 45 women (mean age: 34.9 ± 6.2 years), were included in the study. Plasma preparation, peptide extraction and OT radioimmunoassay were carried out according to standardized methods.
Results:
The results showed that OT plasma levels (pg ̸ ml, mean ± SD) were significantly higher in women than in men (4.53 ± 1.18 vs 1.53 ± 1.19, p ˂ 0.001).
Conclusions:
The present finding demonstrates sex-related differences in plasma OT levels in humans. It is tempting to hypothesize that such differences might be related to behaviours, attitudes, as well as susceptibility to stress response, resilience and social emotions specific of women and men.