PROGESTERONE HAS A NEUROPROTECTIVE EFFECT AND PREVENTS DEPRESSION SIGNS IN A MALE RAT DEPRESSION LIKE MODEL

VANINA ANABEL VILLEGAS; MARÍA BELÉN MULLE BERNEDO; SEBASTIÁN GARCÍA MENÉNDEZ; ANTONELLA ROSARIO RAMONA CÁCERES GIMENEZ; ROBERTO YUNES; RICARDO CABRERA

Mar del Plata

Congreso; LXI Reunión científica anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación Clínica; 2016

Depression is one of the psychiatric disorders with the highest incidence in the recent decades. It has been recently related to different neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson. These pathologies often appear associated to a premotor sign such as depression and decreased cognitive performance.The objective was to study and evaluate if the treat- ment with the neuroactive steroid progesterone could prevent the development of premotor early signs of neurodegenerative diseases in a model of catecholamin- ergic depletion by reserpine. Sprague-Dawley male rats (250-350 g), between 60 and 90 days old were used. The experimental groups were: C (saline), R (reserpine0.1 mg/kg/sc, 10 injection over the course of 20 days), P (progesterone 4 mg/kg/sc) alone, 5 days after de experi- ments and PP + R (reserpine 5 days after a previous dose of progesterone). During the course of reserpine treatment the animals were evaluated in the catalepsy test. Forced swimming and novel object recognition were tested before the appearance of the motor signs. Data were analysed by ANOVA-1 and Tukey`s post hoc.A signi cant decrease p . as observed bet een the R vs C groups in all evaluated behavioural parameters. There ere no signi cant differences in the catalepsy time in the PP+R vs C. Although PP+R vs R, showed a signi cant increase in the time spend s imming on theforce swimming test (p