A parametrization of the two-electron reduced density matrix (2-RDM) provides energies that improve on the accuracy of coupled electron-pair theories including coupled cluster with single-double excitations at the computational cost of configuration interaction with single-double excitations [Mazziotti, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 253002 (2008)]. This parametric 2-RDM method was recently employed to study the isomerization of oxywater to hydrogen peroxide where it predicted a lower energy barrier from oxywater (2.1 kcal mol−1) than coupled cluster methods (4.2 kcal mol−1). In this paper we study an isoelectronic analogue, the isomerization of ammonia oxide to hydroxylamine. In the extrapolated basis-set limit, using the augmented correlation-consistent polarized valance quadruple-zeta (aug-cc-pVQZ) basis set, the parametric 2-RDM method predicts a 27.5 kcal mol−1 barrier from ammonia oxide to hydroxylamine. We report reaction energies, barriers, geometries, and natural-orbital occupation numbers for the ammonia-oxide reaction and compare them to those from the oxywater reaction. We find that the parametric 2-RDM method agrees with dynamic correlation wavefunction methods when the multi-reference character of the system is small as in the ammonia-oxide isomerization computed here but that it captures additional multi-reference correlation, usually requiring a multi-reference method, when such correlation increases as in the oxywater isomerization.