• Rastafa I Geddes, Eric A Sribnick, Iqbal Sayeed, and Donald G Stein.
• Department of Emergency Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America.
• Plos One. 2014 Jan 1;9(1):e87252.

PurposeControlled cortical impact (CCI) models in adult and aged Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats have been used extensively to study medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) injury and the effects of post-injury progesterone treatment, but the hormone's effects after traumatic brain injury (TBI) in juvenile animals have not been determined. In the present proof-of-concept study we investigated whether progesterone had neuroprotective effects in a pediatric model of moderate to severe bilateral brain injury.MethodsTwenty-eight-day old (PND 28) male Sprague Dawley rats received sham (n = 24) or CCI (n = 47) injury and were given progesterone (4, 8, or 16 mg/kg per 100 g body weight) or vehicle injections on post-injury days (PID) 1-7, subjected to behavioral testing from PID 9-27, and analyzed for lesion size at PID 28.ResultsThe 8 and 16 mg/kg doses of progesterone were observed to be most beneficial in reducing the effect of CCI on lesion size and behavior in PND 28 male SD rats.ConclusionOur findings suggest that a midline CCI injury to the frontal cortex will reliably produce a moderate TBI comparable to what is seen in the adult male rat and that progesterone can ameliorate the injury-induced deficits.

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