Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Hello! (: Chinese New Year holidays are over, and now we are back in school again (sigh!). Anyway hope everyone had fun collecting angbaos! Haha. Ok let's get back to learning more about oxytocin.
Having seen all the various aspects of oxytocin, today we will be looking at the problems of using oxytocin on both humans and animals.
Risks of Using Oxytocin
As mentioned before, oxytocin is used in breast-feeding and it causes milk to be present in the mother’s breasts. Oxytocin can be given as a nasal spray to help breast-feeding women who are experiencing poor milk let-down during the first few days of breast-feeding.
However, oxytocin nasal spray should not be used by pregnant women because it may cause uterine contractions and miscarriage. Other side effects may include irritation of the inside of the nose, uterine bleeding and/or contractions, watering eyes and headache. Hence, one must be really cautious in using oxytocin nasal spray!
Other forms of use of oxytocin include Pitocin and Syntocinon. Pitocin is the trademark name that King Pharmaceuticals uses for its synthetic oxytocin. It is a clear liquid that is injected into an intravenous drip(into a vein) so that it may help to start a labour or speed up a slow labour etc.
Risks of using Pitocin are as followed:
(a) Increased pain with contractions.
(b) Long contractions with double peaks.
(c) High possibility of a uterine rupture and likelihood of depressed fetal heart rate patterns.
Ouch>.< Looks like one really has to be careful about using oxytocin.
Ok I shall end here. Anyway good luck to everyone for the upcoming tests! Byee(:
