Author(s): Nazim Nasir and Aijaz Ahmed Khan
Depressive disorders are amongst the most common life threatening disorders and despite of extensive research work its etiology and mode of action of antidepressant drugs remains elu-sive. The present study was conducted on 15 adult albino rats (200-250gm) divided into con-trol and experimental groups. First group was control, second group received acute depres-sion (4 weeks) by immobilization method using rat immobilizer and third group received standard 4 week treatment (using Flouxetine 1mg/kg body wt. orally) following acute de-pression. At the end of the experiment animals were sacrificed and perfused with 10% for-maldehyde. Brains were dissected and tissue blocks were processed for paraffin embedding. Observations were made on 10 micron thick H & E stained sections. Estimation of neuronal density of CA3 regions was performed using Motic images plus 2.0 Software. Neuronal den-sity was markedly reduced (100.3 cells/cubic mm) after acute depression, as compared to control (144.5 cells/cubic mm) and after standard treatment it improved to 121.1 cells /cubic mm. These results suggested that effect of short-term stress-induced depression on hippo-campus is partly reversed by the pharmacological intervention of known antidepressants and warrants longer term study.