Dear All, I would like to know which animal is the best to have a controlled glycemia, STZ induced rat or ZDF rat ? I would like to be able to have a blood glucose going from 50 to 300 mg/dL. I have already achieved it with a ZDF rat, but some people told me that STZ is a good model. I would like to have your feed back. Thank you so much. Gisele.

Giselle,

STZ is a pretty simple method for inducing hyperglycemia. However I getting "controlled hyperglycemia" can take some trial and error depending on the organism of choice. Low dose STZ (50mg/kg) injected i.p. for 5 consecutive days will result in hyperglycemia (250 mg/dl glucose) between 2 and 4 weeks post-injection in most cases. If not given insulin these animals will succumb in 6-8 weeks to diabetes. If you're interested in faster hyperglycemia, you can use high dose STZ (90mg/kg) and get elevated glucose in a few days. However in my opinion the high-dose model causes multiple defects and changes to gene expression, whereas low-dosing seems to only affect the pancreas. Let me know if you any other questions, i use STZ daily.



Rb

Dear Rb,

And about ZDF rat ? Any experience, better or not that STZ ?

Best Regards.
Gisèle.

ZDF and STZ are different method, I think you should not compare both the models as one is the animal species having hyperglycemia and second one is chemicaly induced model. As per me if you compound is not directly act on beta cell you can use any iof that model but if you compound act on beta cell then I will recomend ZDF because STZ incuce the diabetes by distroying the beta cell.

if you required more detail or have any confusion the let me know.

Chintan

Dear Chintan,
I get the differences you spoke about. I will just mesure glucose and test a glucometer...
It is difference on strain keeping, animal response to insuline (so better for STZ than ZDF)...
Best.
Gisèle.

Dear Gisele,

If you are going to measure only glucose level in blood to see the effect of the insuline then STZ model in good enough. Can you share the experiment time period? because there is chances for reversal also.

Chintan

Dear Chintan,

It is just for a 2 to 5 days study, so I think it should fit.

Best.
Gisele

Ok I wanna ake part in this discussion. Regarding STZ the dose may differ from one starin or another (as wistar and Sprague Dawely) I read that R Bishop was suggesting 50 mg/kg for 5 days but I used that dose before and because of the individual variation some rats may die while others may resist DM. So you gotta try like a trial at first to see what your gonna get and I recommend i.v as a better route of adminstration cause STZ is not stable.