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Neurochemistry and Neuropharmacology Poster Number 177 / Session 3 Differential effects of a chronic treatment with Pregabalin on mature and immature adult hippocampal granule cells Lucia Coll1°, Lempel Augusto A1°, Piriz Joaquin2°, Uchitel Osvaldo D1° 1º IFIBYNE-UBA-CONICET 2º Departamento de Fisiología, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Buenos Aires lu.coll@fbmc.fcen.uba.ar ________________________________________________________ Pregabalin (PGB) is an anticonvulsant, analgesic, and anxiolytic drug used in patients with epilepsy, neuropathic pain, anxiety disorder and migraine. Though PGB clinical use is widely extended its physiological mechanism of action is not completely understood. PGB targets the α2δ subunit of the voltage dependent calcium channel shown to be involved in synaptogenesis and adult neurogenesis in dentate gyrus a brain area related to some of the pathologies that are currently treated with PGB. Animals were cronicaly treated with PGB and the morphological and functional properties of adult and new GFP labeled neurons were studied. We found that the application of PGB increased the frequency of miniature excitatory post-synaptic potentials, the action potential repolarization amplitude and the AMPA/NMDA ratio. All these effects are consistent with the accelerated neuronal development. The degree of maturation of newborn DGCs was determined by measuring the proportion of BrdU cells expressing DCX and Cb. These results are in agreement with the electrophysiological recordings described above. We found PGB to affect differentially mature and immature DGCs. In immature granules cells both electrophysiological and morphological parameters are compatible with an acceleration of development via PGB. On the other hand, in mature DGCs, PGB seems to decrease glutamatergic transmission excitability and to reduce network activity. *These authors contributed equally to this work.