Oxytocin (OXT) is a hypothalamic peptide that plays a number of roles in the body, being involved in labor and lactation, as well as cognitive-emotional processes and social behavior. In recent years, knowledge of the physiology of OXT has been repeatedly used to explore its potential role in the treatment of numerous diseases, identifying a significant role for OXT in appetite regulation, eating behavior, weight regulation, and food-related beliefs. In this review we provide an overview of publications on this topic, but due to the wealth of research, we have limited our focus to studies based on the use of intranasal OXT in psychiatric diseases, with a particular focus on the role of oxytocin in eating disorders and obesity. Accumulating evidence that OXT intranasal supplementation may provide some therapeutic benefit seems promising. In individuals with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) and schizophrenia, OXT may affect core deficits, improving social cognition and reducing symptom severity in schizophrenia. Dysregulation of serum and CSF OXT levels, as well as polymorphisms of its genes, may affect emotion perception in patients with eating disorders and correlate with co-occurring depressive and anxiety disorders. Nevertheless, there are still many critical questions regarding the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of intranasal OXT that can only be answered in larger randomized controlled trials.

催产素 (OXT) 是一种下丘脑肽，在体内发挥多种作用，参与分娩和哺乳，以及认知情绪过程和社会行为。近年来，OXT的生理学知识被反复用于探索其在治疗多种疾病中的潜在作用，确定了OXT在食欲调节、饮食行为、体重调节和食物相关信念中的重要作用。在这篇综述中，我们概述了有关该主题的出版物，但由于研究丰富，我们的重点仅限于基于鼻内 OXT 在精神疾病中的应用的研究，特别关注催产素在饮食中的作用疾病和肥胖。越来越多的证据表明 OXT 鼻内补充可能会提供一些治疗益处，这似乎很有希望。对于患有自闭症谱系障碍(ASD) 和精神分裂症的个体，OXT 可能会影响核心缺陷，改善社会认知并减轻精神分裂症症状的严重程度。血清和脑脊液 OXT 水平的失调及其基因多态性可能会影响饮食失调患者的情绪感知，并与同时发生的抑郁症和焦虑症相关。尽管如此，关于鼻内 OXT 的药代动力学和药效学仍然存在许多关键问题，这些问题只能在更大规模的随机对照试验中得到解答。