The “love hormone” does more than trigger labor and cement emotional ties between people. Oxytocin also helps repair damaged muscles, at least in mice.
Oxytocin stimulates muscle stem cells to divide when muscle is damaged, researchers report June 10 in Nature Communications. Experiments with mice also showed that the hormone’s levels in the animals’ blood declines with age. Giving old mice shots of oxytocin restored their muscle-regeneration capabilities to match those of much younger rodents. But extra doses of the hormone did not boost muscle-building in young mice.