Progesterone has a neuroprotective effect and prevents depression sings in a male rat depression like model

Abstract

Depression is one of the psychiatric disorders with the highest incidence in recent decades. It has been recently related to different neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson. These pathologies often appear associated with a premotor sign such as depression and decreased cognitive performance. The objective was to study and evaluate if the treatment with the neuroactive steroid progesterone could prevent the development of premotor early signs of neurodegenerative diseases in a model of catecholaminergic 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 (reserpine 0.1 mg/kg/sc, 10 injection over the course of 20 days), P (progesterone 4 mg/kg/sc) alone, 5 days after de experiments andPP + 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 analyzed by ANOVA-1 and Tukey`s post hoc. A significant decrease (p<0.05) was observed between the R vs C groups in all evaluated behavioral parameters. There were no significant differences in the catalepsy time in the PP+R vs C. Although PP+R vs R showed a significant increase in the time spent swimming in the forced swimming test (p <0.05) and in the discrimination index (p <0.05) in novel object recognition. We conclude that a previous progesterone treatment can avoid depression-like behavior and improves short time memory and the on/ off effect on locomotor activity. Progesterone exerts a neuroprotective effect against the reserpine treatment, preventing cognitive and depression premotor disorders induced by catecholamine depletion.