Understanding the cognitive impact of the contraceptive estrogen Ethinyl Estradiol: Tonic and cyclic administration impairs memory, and performance correlates with basal forebrain cholinergic system integrity
Autor: | Candy W. S. Tsang, Elizabeth B. Engler-Chiurazzi, Sarah E. Mennenga, Heather A. Bimonte-Nelson, Melissa L. Kingston, Stephanie V. Koebele, Leslie C. Baxter, Julia E. Gerson |
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Rok vydání: | 2015 |
Předmět: |
medicine.medical_specialty
Basal Forebrain medicine.drug_class Endocrinology Diabetes and Metabolism Ethinyl Estradiol Drug Administration Schedule Article Random Allocation Reproductive senescence Subcutaneous injection Cognition Endocrinology Memory Internal medicine medicine Animals Cholinergic neuron Maze Learning Biological Psychiatry Memory Disorders Basal forebrain Dose-Response Relationship Drug Endocrine and Autonomic Systems Working memory Choline acetyltransferase Cholinergic Neurons Rats Inbred F344 Rats Psychiatry and Mental health Estrogen Cholinergic Female Psychology Contraceptives Oral |
Zdroj: | Psychoneuroendocrinology. 54:1-13 |
ISSN: | 0306-4530 |
DOI: | 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2015.01.002 |
Popis: | Ethinyl Estradiol (EE), a synthetic, orally bio-available estrogen, is the most commonly prescribed form of estrogen in oral contraceptives, and is found in at least 30 different contraceptive formulations currently prescribed to women as well as hormone therapies prescribed to menopausal women. Thus, EE is prescribed clinically to women at ages ranging from puberty to reproductive senescence. Here, in two separate studies, the cognitive effects of cyclic or tonic EE administration following ovariectomy (Ovx) were evaluated in young female rats. Study I assessed the cognitive effects of low and high doses of EE, delivered tonically via a subcutaneous osmotic pump. Study II evaluated the cognitive effects of low, medium, and high doses of EE administered via a daily subcutaneous injection, modeling the daily rise and fall of serum EE levels with oral regimens. Study II also investigated the impact of low, medium and high doses of EE on the basal forebrain cholinergic system. The low and medium doses utilized here correspond to the range of doses currently used in clinical formulations, and the high dose corresponds to doses prescribed to a generation of women between 1960 and 1970, when oral contraceptives first became available. We evaluate cognition using a battery of maze tasks tapping several domains of spatial learning and memory as well as basal forebrain cholinergic integrity using immunohistochemistry and unbiased stereology to estimate the number of choline acetyltransferase (ChAT)-producing cells in the medial septum and vertical/diagonal bands. At the highest dose, EE treatment impaired multiple domains of spatial memory relative to vehicle treatment, regardless of administration method. When given cyclically at the low and medium doses, EE did not impact working memory, but transiently impaired reference memory during the learning phase of testing. Of the doses and regimens tested here, only EE at the highest dose impaired several domains of memory; tonic delivery of low EE, a dose that corresponds to the most popular doses used in the clinic today, did not impact cognition on any measure. Both medium and high injection doses of EE reduced the number of ChAt-immunoreactive cells in the basal forebrain, and cell population estimates in the vertical/diagonal bands negatively correlated with working memory errors. |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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