Oxytocin is a powerful hormone that rises in women during childbirth and breast-feeding. Based on research in animals, scientists believe it is also linked to the way parents and infants bond, but its role in humans is not clear.
A new study of couples and their firstborn children suggests oxytocin levels are just as high in fathers as in mothers during their newborn’s early months, but higher levels correspond to different parenting styles in men and women.
Ilanit Gordon of Bar-Ilan University in Israel led a team that studied 80 couples at six weeks and six months after their babies were born. During visits to the families’ homes, blood samples were obtained and parenting styles were observed. Researchers noted when parents would gaze at their children, talk to them in sing-song patterns, touch them affectionately, or stimulate them by changing their positions, showing them objects, or touching them in a playful way.
Oxytocin levels were the same within couples, increasing as their babies grew older. But the highest levels were noted in women who showed a more affectionate style and in men who engaged in more stimulating play with their babies compared with other parents.
BOTTOM LINE: New mothers and fathers show similar levels of the hormone oxytocin, which might be related to parent-infant bonding, but there were gender-specific differences in how parents behaved with their babies.
CAUTIONS: The study did not account for the role of breast-feeding in women’s oxytocin levels.
WHERE TO FIND IT: Biological Psychiatry, Aug. 15
Zinc may block stomach acid
Stomach acid problems plague up to 50 million Americans. Beyond causing discomfort, too much acid can damage the stomach and lead to cancer of the esophagus. Drugs to treat excessive stomach acid, including proton pump inhibitors such as omeprazole (Prilosec), can take days to become effective, don’t always work, and sometimes have troubling side effects. A new study from Yale explored whether zinc, an essential dietary element that protects tissues like the ones lining the stomach, could control acid secretion.Dr. Philipp Kirchhoff and his colleagues led experiments that tested zinc in tissues that had been removed from human and rat stomachs. In laboratory dishes, gastric glands exposed to zinc immediately stopped their acid production. The same thing happened in live rats. A final study using human volunteers compared zinc supplements, proton pump inhibitors, zinc plus a proton pump inhibitor, and a placebo in 12 healthy human volunteers.
The zinc supplement, both alone and with the proton pump inhibitor, shut down acid production within seconds and lasted for three hours, as measured by pH probes lowered into the volunteers’ stomachs. The combination was not more effective than zinc alone. Proton pump inhibitors and the placebo were about half as effective as the zinc in reducing acid.
BOTTOM LINE: Zinc supplements worked quickly to block stomach acid in small studies of rats and humans.
CAUTIONS: Larger and longer studies are needed before zinc supplements can be recommended to treat acid secretion.
WHERE TO FIND IT: The American Journal of Gastroenterology
ELIZABETH COONEY 
