Serum Oxytocin Level Correlates With Gut Microbiome Dysbiosis in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

To investigate the levels of serum oxytocin (OT) in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and explore the association between OT levels and gut microbiota relative abundances, we recruited 39 children with ASD children–mother dyads and 44 healthy controls. Serum OT levels were determined via enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and gut microbiota abundances were determined by 16S rRNA sequencing. We found that the OT level of ASD was lower than the healthy control group overall (P < 0.05). Furthermore, we present preliminary evidence of gut microbiome dysbiosis observed among children with ASD to lower levels of OT based on correlational analysis between serum OT and specific gut microbiota abundances (P < 0.05). We also found sex-related differences in serum OT levels and GIS index (P < 0.05). However, the generalizability of findings relevant to females with ASD require further validation in future studies involving larger sample sizes and balanced sex distributions due to the small number of females involved in this study. Nonetheless, these new findings further our understanding of the effects of low serum OT levels among individuals with ASD, which provides preliminary evidence in hopes of guiding future study design or mechanistic studies. The findings of the present study may be suggestive of potential ASD subtypes based on ASD severity and gut microbiome composition that may facilitate the prediction of the therapeutic responses of OT among those with ASD.

Leveraging Existing 16SrRNA Microbial Data to Define a Composite Biomarker for Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…In addition, the 16SrRNA gene sequencing data from 10 microbiota studies met the criteria for further analysis. The 10 data sets were labeled as S1 to S10 ( 13 – 22 ). This combined data set consisted of 1,019 participants (569 ASD and 450 healthy controls), and the study sizes varied from 12 to 286 subjects.…”

Frequency-Tagging EEG of Superimposed Social and Non-Social Visual Stimulation Streams Provides No Support for Social Salience Enhancement after Intranasal Oxytocin Administration

“…In contrast, a Bayesian meta-analysis on the efficacy of intranasal OT to improve areas of social cognition and non-social neurocognition in schizophrenia indicated that OT might have selective effects on high-level social cognition [ 95 ]. Thus, even though a large number of studies provide compelling evidence for OT’s modulatory effect on a vast array of complex social cognition behavior in humans, both in neurotypical and in patient populations [ 3 , 5 , 8 , 12 , 96 , 97 , 98 ], accumulating null results also start raising concerns about the reproducibility and validity of these findings. No matter whether the inconsistent evidence may be attributed to the fact that OT’s effects are too small to detect or too selective, for instance, in terms of social cognitions [ 95 ] or individual characteristics [ 21 ], a more comprehensive and complementary consideration of methodology, theory and reproducibility will be necessary [ 85 , 94 , 99 ].…”

Antibiotics and mental health: The good, the bad and the ugly

“…In patients with major depression, Scantamburlo et al [98] found that plasma oxytocin levels were reduced compared to individuals without a mood disorder and oxytocin has been reported as possessing prosocial effects [99]. There is increasing evidence from rodent studies that gut microbes can alter oxytocin levels, and early exposure to antibiotics may increase the risk of autism [100][101][102]. In a study in mice, Desbonnet et al found that early exposure to broad-spectrum antibiotics leads to a decrease in brain oxytocin levels [103].…”