Studies in this laboratory on the details of the alloxan reaction in albino rats of Wistar parentage have revealed a number of features hitherto not reported in this or other species of experimental animal. 1 ' 2 > 3 These features include:1. Greater susceptibility of females than of males to alloxan diabetes, a sex difference not eliminated by prepubertal gonadectomy.2. Marked and delayed hypoglycemic phase of the alloxan reaction occurring at about the 24th to 37th hours after injection.3. Inability of severely diabetic animals to maintain high fasting blood sugars and the frequent occurrence of severe fasting hypoglycemia, a demonstration that alloxan diabetes in Wistar rats is of a complex and unorthodox type.It seemed strange that these characteristics of alloxan diabetes, so marked in the Wistar derivative, were not described by other workers who have observed alloxan treated rats. It appeared likely that the explanation might lie in strain differences. The present work, which explores this possibility, demonstrates that such a strain difference does in fact exist and implies diversity between strains in endocrine endowment relating to carbohydrate metabolism.
EXPERIMENTALObservations of the alloxan reaction in 72 male and 72 female albino rats of Wistar origin which were reported previously 1 are compared herein with those from a similar experiment using 68 male and 66 female
Partial pancreatectomy was performed on young and adult rats of the Wistar and the Osborne-Mendel strains. All operations were done by the same operator to minimize effects of variation in technique. Observation of the resulting alterations in glucose metabolism revealed: a) strain difference. Osborne-Mendel animals were frequently made diabetic but Wistar animals never; b) sex difference. Males developed diabetes with four times the frequency of the females, a sex difference opposite to that found in alloxan diabetes production; c) age difference. Surgery in the immature animal was much more often successful in producing diabetes than it was in the adult.
Repeated measurements of the fasting and 2-hour postprandial serum lipids (cholesterol, phospholipid, and triglyceride) of "normal" [see table in the PDF file] subjects and subjects with atherosclerotic heart disease when consuming diets of high-, low-, or "normal"-fat content have been made.
Triglyceride levels correlated better with the clinical diagnosis of heart disease than did cholesterol or phospholipid levels. The wide fluctuations in triglyceride levels in the same [see table in the PDF file] subject (normal or atherosclerotic) when on a "normal self-selected" diet and the unexpected findings when a short-term (3-day) period of dietary fat manipulation render the value of random triglyceride levels as an indictator of the presence or likely development of atherosclerotic heart disease of little or no value in the individual subject.
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