Hormonal effects of estrogen and progesterone in postpartum depression
Hormonal effects of estrogen and progesterone in postpartum depression

Summary/Abstract: Throughout life, women make a sequential transition through states modulated by the relativelevels of sex steroid hormones that include pre-puberty, menarche, menstruation, pregnancy,breastfeeding and menopause. In addition, exogenous sex hormones can further alter normalhormonal states, so the risk of major depression in multiparous women is twice as high as innulliparous women and is particularly high during the years after menopause. These"reproductive depressions" involve episodes of depression that occur specifically during thepremenstrual, postpartum and perimenopause phases in women. There is substantialevidence that estrogen and progesterone vary considerably throughout a woman's life andcontribute to changes in brain structure and function. These findings are consistent withfunctional data indicating an important role for estrogen and progesterone in mediatingemotional processing. The aim of the study was to explore the reciprocal relationshipsbetween sex steroid hormones, estrogen and progesterone throughout physiological andpathophysiological conditions in nulliparous females compared to multiparous females and toidentify the cause of depression in multiparous females. Material and method: 20 Swiss mice,nulliparous females and 15 Swiss mice, multipair females with three pregnancies in number,were used, for which the hormonal dosing was done. Single variance analysis (ANOVA) wasused. Results: in the group of nulliparous female mice, an increase of the average values ofestrogen wad observed, compared to the group of multiparous female mice. Progesteronelevels were not significantly different in the two groups of mice. Conclusions: estrogen valueschanged significantly between the parameters of nulliparous values compared to multiparousfemale mice, and progesterone values did not change in the two groups of mice studied,suggesting that the increase in estrogen values in multiparous females might causepostpartum depression.

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