Central neural mechanisms of progesterone action: application to the respiratory system

Around the turn of the century, it was recognized that women hyperventilate during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle and during pregnancy. Although a causative role for the steroid hormone progesterone in this hyperventilation was suggested as early as the 1940s, there has been no clear indication as to the mechanism by which it produces its respiratory effects. In contrast, much mechanistic information has been obtained over the same period about a different effect of progesterone, i.e., the facilitation of reproductive behaviors. In this case, the bulk of the evidence supports the hypothesis that progesterone acts via a genomic mechanism with characteristics not unlike those predicted by classic models for steroid hormone action. We recently, therefore, undertook a series of experiments to test predictions of those same models with reference to the respiratory effects of progesterone. Here we highlight the results of those studies; as background to and precedent for our experiments, we briefly review previous work in which effects of progesterone on respiration and reproductive behaviors have been studied. Our results indicate that the respiratory response to progesterone is mediated at hypothalamic sites through an estrogen- (E2) dependent progesterone receptor- (PR) mediated mechanism requiring RNA and protein synthesis, i.e., gene expression. The E2 dependence of the respiratory response to progesterone is likely a consequence of the demonstrated induction of PR mRNA and PR in hypothalamic neurons by E2. In short, we found that neural mechanisms underlying the stimulation of respiration by progesterone were similar to those mediating its reproductive effects.