Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: Oxytocin is a nine-amino acid peptide hormone and/or neuropeptide that has proposed mechanisms related to diminishing the effects of physical, psychological, and psychosocial stress. Exercise is often used in clinical trials to quantify stress because it is easily reproducible between subjects using relative VO2 intensities. However, trials examining plasma oxytocin in response to physical stress within exercise have shown mixed results possibly related to the varied measurement techniques. The purpose of this study is to measure plasma oxytocin changes in response to steady state exercise and graded maximal exercise and to determine if a relationship exists. Procedures were utilized to release oxytocin from the protein binding within blood and measure the oxytocin concentration through a high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to a mass spectrometer. Difficulties in the chromatography detection sensitivity forced the present study to also use an ELISA to determine plasma oxytocin concentrations. Plasma oxytocin concentrations were consistently too low to detect even after sizable spiking for both measurement techniques. Mean resting concentration derived from the ELISA was 371.75 ± 215.10 pg/ml. There was no significant difference in concentration following either exercise stimulus. These results suggest that the extraction technique utilized with the ELISA kit failed to separate protein binding from oxytocin prior to analysis.
Author: Avery J. Brown
Language: English
Subfield: Endocrine and Autonomic Systems
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2890472850