The Protective Effect And Mechanism Of Progesterone On Microglia After Oxygen And Glucose Deprivation

Progesterone is a steroid hormone, which exists widely in women. The clinical records show that the percentage of female patients who have stroke is much lower than that of male. This indicates that progesterone not only can be used in giving birth, but also can be used in the therapy of neurodegeneration. Because of widely accepted by scientists, recently progesterone had been used in clinical trial. But the process of its function is not only the protection effect on neuron, but also progesterone receptor of glia, as well as the interaction between cells in CNS. The reports about the interaction between progesterone and microglia is few.We focused on the apoptosis of microglia after24hours of oxygen and glucose deprivation(OGD), and the protective effect of progesterone on microglia, via cell culture, immunohistochemistry, trypan blue stain, Hoechst33258stain, MTT analysis, cell counting and so on. We also explored the most effective concentration of progesterone to protect microglia after OGD.To study the influence of OGD and progesterone on microglial proliferation in vitro, we analysed the morphology, death and apopotosis of microglia after OGD. The results show that progesterone can restrain microglial apoptosis after OGD. We investigated the effect of different concentration of progesterone, and found that40μM is the most effective concentration of it.40μM progesterone can significantly reduce the caspase-3produced by microglia (PO.05), positive rate of microglia by trypan blue stain (P<0.01) and the amount of shrinking nucleus.In conclusion, progesterone may protect microglia from degenerating in OGD, and maintain the structural and functional plasticity of microglia.