RESEARCH ARTICLE


Rodent Models of Diabetes and Diabetes Complications



Eleazar Shafrir1, Yasunori Kanazawa2, *
1 Hadassah University Hospital and Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem 91120, Israel.
2 Japanese Diabetes Foundation, Tokyo, Japan


© Shafrir et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Japanese Diabetes Foundation, Tokyo, Japan. E-mail: Ykanazawa@aol.com


Abstract

The rats listed here have been extensively studied as animal models of diabetic complications and their pathogenesis. The results of studies with the SHROB, JCR:LAcp and OLETF rats are instructive in understanding macro vascular diseases. The Cohen, GK, SHROB and OLETF rats are model of diabetic kidney disease. The SHROB rat might also be useful for diabetic retinopathy study. The importance of mitochondrial inactivity in diabetes was demonstrated with the ZDF rat. The heterogeneous complication models may be useful to understand pathogenesis, prevention and treatment of complications of diabetes mellitus.