Salivary Detection of Oxytocin

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SALIVARY DETECTION OF THE LOVE HORMONE AN ENZYME IMMUNOASSAY FOR DETECTING SALIVARY OXYTOCIN Oxytocin (OT) has been called the ‘Love Hormone’ due to its involvement in various social behaviors such as partner preferences, sexual behavior, maternal behavior and parenting. It has also been called the ‘Trust Hormone’ since it is known to increase trust and decrease anxiety. Its most established role is in lactation and labor [1-4]. Thus, OT is an important candidate biomarker for monitoring various physiological processes and emotional states. The measurement of patterns of OT release would be essential for biomarker studies [2]. Most of the data for the relation between OT and behavior have been generated from animal models since there are many issues with the detection of release of OT in humans. Plasma and urine testing are not ideal due to pulsatile release of OT. Since OT release is linked to stress responses venipuncture can affect OT levels. Also, urinary testing restricts the pool of patients due to exclusion of patients such as infants [3]. In addition to being noninvasive, salivary detection also enables sample collection by the patient under both monitored and unmonitored conditions [2]. Thus, salivary detection of OT is the most convenient and well suited method. Radio-immunoassays could be used for the salivary detection of OT. But these usually require large amounts of sample and chemical extraction. Also levels of OT obtained by this method are close to the detection limit for the assay leading to errors. Thus an enzyme-immunoassay (EIA) would be better suited for OT detection. Detection of salivary OT using a commercial EIA kit with minimal cross reactivity and a lower detection limit of 4.68 pg/ml was described by Carter, C.S., et al. Prior to the assay, the samples were concentrated fourfold to ensure that the OT levels would be within the

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