Alloxan induced diabetes in rabbits

ABSTRACT

Alloxan monohydrate is a common drug used for developing experimental diabetes in animals, as streptozotocin, though less toxic than alloxan is considerably costlier. This study aimed to provide an exact and detailed account of alloxan induced diabetes in rabbits as none was available in both local and international literature and in Pharmacology textbooks. This resulted in extremely high mortality in experimental animals i.e., rabbits, leading to inevitably wasted research time and effort for a researcher.Twenty-four healthy rabbits of a local strain weighing 1000 to 1800 g were obtained and kept at the animal house of the Department of Pharmacology Shaikh Zayed Hospital, Lahore. They were injected with varying doses of Alloxan monohydrate [from 75mg -1 l0mg]/ kg body weight in order to induce diabetes. The blood glucose RBS levels were estimated 8 days after injecting the alloxan and subsequently randomly at intervals of five to ten days till the rabbits became diabetic. These doses were found to lower the rabbit mortality by 25% as compared to [upto 75%] that was encountered with a single standardized dose of 160mg/kg body weight suggested by Akhtar et al. [1982] or 80mg/kg body weight [Puri and Prabhu 2002]. It was therefore concluded that our proposed regime may be beneficial for future researchers aiming to develop a similar animal model