Table 1.

Studies on oxytocin treatment in social anxiety disorder (SAD) patients

First author	Amount and use of placebo	Study design/experimental paradigm	n	Results
Dohdia et al. 2014	24 IU, nasal spray vs. placebo	Resting-state fMRI	18 SAD vs. 18 CON	In SAD patients, OXT enhanced resting-state functional connectivity of the left and right amygdala with several cortical areas thereby reversing the suppressed amygdala-frontal connectivity observed relative to CON in response to placebo
Fang et al. 2017	24 IU, nasal spray	reward motivation task that assessed willingness to work for self vs. other monetary rewards	52 SAD	No main effect of OXT, but OXT-treated less socially anxious individuals who received OXT worked harder for other vs. own rewards, compared to high socially anxious individuals
Gorka et al. 2015	24 IU, nasal spray vs. placebo	Assessment of fear-related amygdala reactivity with fMRI	17 SAD vs. 18 CON	In SAD patients, but not in CON, OXT enhanced functional connectivity between the amygdala and the bilateral insula and middle cingulate/dorsal anterior cingulate gyrus during fear processing
Guastella et al. 2009	24 IU, nasal spray vs. placebo	OXT was applied before 4 of in total 5 exposure treatment sessions	25	Mental representation of self but not SAD symptoms, life-impairment measures or dysfunctional cognition improved in OXT -treated group
Hurlemann et al. 2019	24 IU, nasal spray vs. placebo	Temporal discounting task and reward evaluation	33 SAD vs. 37 CON	OXT increased the patient choices (later-larger) across all participants. SAD patients showed more impulsive preferences under placebo compared to CON while this difference disappeared after OXT treatment
Labuschagne et al. 2010	24 IU, nasal spray vs. placebo	Assessment of fear-related amygdala reactivity with fMRI	18 SAD vs. 18 CON	OXT had no effect on amygdala activity to emotional faces in the CON group, but attenuated the heightened amygdala reactivity to fearful faces in SAD patients
Labuschagne et al. 2012	24 IU, nasal spray vs. placebo	Assessment of fear-related cortical reactivity with fMRI	18 SAD vs. 18 CON	OXT reduced heightened activity to sad faces in the medial prefrontal cortex extending into anterior cingulate cortex in SAD patients to levels similar to those of controls

RCT randomized controlled trial, fMRI functional magnetic resonance, CON controls, OXT oxytocin