ArticleBMC pregnancy and childbirth2022
Endogenous oxytocin levels in extracted saliva elevates during breastfeeding correlated with lower postpartum anxiety in primiparous mothers.
Article in BMC pregnancy and childbirth, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- Beyond lactation: Central oxytocin in maternal mental health and disease.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2026Review
- Postpartum Depression and the Emerging Mother-Infant Relationship: Associations With Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor Medication Use.JAACAP open · 2026Article
- Salivary hormones in depression: the future in diagnosis and treatment.Annals of general psychiatry · 2025Review
- Salivary oxytocin responses to infant stimuli vary by EPDS scores among postpartum Japanese mothers without clinically diagnosed postpartum depression.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2025Article
- The Role of Oxytocin and Vasopressin in People with Borderline Personality Disorder: A Closer Look at Adolescents.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Investigation and Analysis of Emotional State and Oxytocin Level in Patients with Postpartum Depression.Actas espanolas de psiquiatria · 2024Article
- Oxytocin and its links through scientific lineage.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2024Article
- Inter-brain synchrony during mother-infant interactive parenting in 3-4-month-old infants with and without an elevated likelihood of autism spectrum disorder.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2023Article
- Affectionate touch and diurnal oxytocin levels: An ecological momentary assessment study.eLife · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundBreastfeeding in the early postpartum period is expected to have mental benefits for mothers; however, the underlying psychobiological mechanisms remain unclear. Previously, we hypothesized that the release of oxytocin in response to the suckling stimuli during breastfeeding would mediate a calming effect on primiparous mothers, and we examined salivary oxytocin measurements in primiparous mothers at postpartum day 4 using saliva samples without extraction, which was erroneous. Thus, further confirmation of this hypothesis with a precise methodology was needed.
methodsWe collected saliva samples at three time points (baseline, feeding, and post-feeding) to measure oxytocin in 24 primiparous mothers on postpartum day 2 (PD2) and 4 (PD4) across the breastfeeding cycle. Salivary oxytocin levels using both extracted and unextracted methods were measured and compared to determine the qualitative differences. State and trait anxiety and clinical demographics were evaluated to determine their association with oxytocin changes.
resultsBreastfeeding elevated salivary oxytocin levels; however, it was not detected to a significant increase in the extraction method at PD4. We found a weak but significant positive correlation between changes in extracted and unextracted oxytocin levels during breastfeeding (feeding minus baseline); there were no other significant positive correlations. Therefore, we used the extracted measurement index for subsequent analysis. We showed that the greater the increase in oxytocin during breastfeeding, the lower the state anxiety, but not trait anxiety. Mothers who exclusively breastfed at the 1-month follow-up tended to be associated with slightly higher oxytocin change at PD2 than those who did not.
conclusionsBreastfeeding in early postpartum days could be accompanied by the frequent release of oxytocin and lower state anxiety, potentially contributing to exclusive breastfeeding.
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