摘要
Steroid hormones participate in the modulation of serotonergic transmission, including the regulation of synthetic and metabolic enzyme production, as well as receptor and transporter activity. The changes of 5-HT5A and 5-HT2c immunolabeling induced by steroids in the hippocampus ofovariectomized rats were studied in this work. Densitometric analysis in rat hippocampi were carried out for adjacent brain coronal immunolabeled sections after treatment with subcutaneous injections of vehicle, estradiol, progesterone or the combination of both steroids in ovariectomized rats. Exposure to estradiol and the combination of estradiol and progesterone significantly reduced the 5-HT5A-like immunosignal in the CA 1 region while progesterone did not induce changes. On the other hand, exposure to the combination of estradiol and progesterone or estradiol alone increased the 5-HT2c immunosignal in the same region. These results indicate that estradiol is involved in the discrete regulation of serotonin receptors 5-HT5A and 5-HT2c in rat hippocampus.
