The use of alloxan to induce diabetes in rabbits and some of the changes it causes in the body
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31210/spi2025.28.04.31Keywords:
alloxan, diabetes, rabbit, blood glucose, histopathologyAbstract
Alloxan is frequently used to induce experimental diabetes in animals. Furthermore, by altering the dosage of administered alloxan, it has been extensively utilized to cause experimental diabetes with varying degrees of the disease severity in animals, including dogs, rats, mice, and rabbits. Alloxan significantly and dose-dependently increased blood glucose levels in rabbits. The study’s objectives are to examine the effects of alloxan time effect, changes in pancreatic histopathology, and blood glucose monitoring, administer the preparation to a diabetic rabbit model. Adult local breed rabbits were provided by the College of Kerbala Veterinary Medicine Laboratory Animal Center, where the experiment was conducted. To investigate the animals, they were divided into 2 groups. The rabbits of the first (experimental) group (n=5) received an injection of alloxan monohydrate at a dose of 150 mg/kg body weight. The rabbits from the second group, the control group (n=5), were given an injection of the same volume of isotonic saline. The studies showed that before the start of the experiment, the blood glucose levels of the first and second groups were practically the same, 108.2±146 and 113.0±7.5 mg/dl, respectively. A week after the administration of alloxan monohydrate, the rabbits from the first group showed a sharp increase in glucose levels by 2.9 times (P<0.05) compared to the same indicator before the start of the experiment, which was also 2.8 times higher (P<0.05) than the indicator in the control group of rabbits. It was found that the glucose level in rabbits from the first experimental group during 2, 3, and 4 weeks of the study remained quite high, above 261 mg/dl, which was significantly higher (P<0.05) compared to the indicator before the start of the experiment and compared to the similar indicators in the control group. According to histological pancreas studies from the rabbits treated with alloxan monohydrate, characteristic changes were observed, indicating a negative effect of the administered drug on the cells of the studied organ. In particular, a month after the administration of alloxan monohydrate, dystrophic changes in the population of β-cells were detected in the study of pancreatic islets of Langerhans, characterized by vacuolization of the cytoplasm, pyknosis and karyolysis of the nuclei.
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