Studies On Mechanisms Of Dysfunction Caused By Chronic Mild Stress And Protective Effects Of 7-oxo-DHEA

Stress has been defined as a state in which the organism confronts a novel, threating or chanllenging situation. All these situation lead to a homestatic imbalance in which the organism perceiving the danger recruits its arsenal of responses in order to return to the homestatic state as quickly as possible. However, if there is a long-term stressor existing, physiological imbalance and bodily injury will be brought about. Acculmualting evidences showed that chronic stress has been linked to the outburst of depressiom. Various investigation have correlated the clinical status of depression with abnormalities observed in depressed patients. Relation of depression to carcinogensis is not clearly defined, however impaired immune surveillance have been repeatedly considered.DHEA is the most abundant product of the adult human adrenal cortex. It exerts multiple effects in various physiological and pathological process such as leaning and memory, depression, resposes to stress. A lower DHEA levels was associated with major depression and DHEA treatment improved depressive symptoms. DHEA is converted in vivo to sex hormore, thus its administration can result in increased blood testosterone levels in women, which in turn can lead to male characteristics such as facial hair. 7-oxo-DHEA is a normal metabolite of DHEA. It should be more useful therapeutic agent since it does not activate the androgen receptor. The intent of this study was to determine if 7-oxo-DHEA would exert anti-depression effect based on a experimental depressive animal model. A further study was carried out to determine whether 7-oxo-DHEA protect cultured primary hippocampal neurons against neurotoxicity induced by glutamate and H₂O₂. The newly developed microarray was introduced in the study to explore the...