The impact of using different doses of progesterone on memory performance

• Published in: Bratislavské lékarské listy Vol. 118; no. 7; pp. 405 - 407
• Main Authors: Roozbehi, A, Sharafi, M T, Karimi, F, Kamali, A M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Slovakia 2017
• Subjects: Animals; Avoidance Learning - drug effects; Cognition - drug effects; Estrogen Replacement Therapy; Hippocampus - drug effects; Male; Memory - drug effects; Progesterone - administration & dosage; Progesterone - pharmacology; Random Allocation; Rats; Rats, Sprague-Dawley; hippocampus; passive avoidance task memory; progesterone
• ISSN: 0006-9248
• DOI: 10.4149/BLL_2017_079

Progesterone is a sex hormone and its receptors are expressed throughout the hippocampus. This study was aimed at evaluating the effects of different doses of progesterone on memory. Male rats were arbitrarily assigned to nine groups, namely Group I: control, Group II: control-cannula, Group III received 0.5 μl of saline by cannula, Groups IV , V, VI, VII and VIII received progesterone in doses of 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, and 3 μg/ 0.5 μl by cannula, respectively. Group IX received 0.5 μl almond oil by cannula. Memory performance was tested in form of passive avoidance task. Our results indicated that progesterone at doses of 1.5 and 2 µg (p < 0.05) significantly increased the memory performance while at a dose of 3 µg (p < 0.05), it significantly decreased memory as compared to the control group. The current study revealed that the influence of progesterone on memory is related to its dose (Fig. 1, Ref. 25).