It is already well established that alloxan is not a very reliable model for induction of insulin dependent diabetes in rats. With the normally used doses of upto 150mg/kg, you get an incidence of diabetes in 40-60% of the tested animals. this too is not stable. you might find that upto 3 out of 10 diabetic animals become completely normal by 14-21 days. This is because as compared to streptozotocin, alloxan does not produce efficient and complete destruction of beta cells. As a results, some of these cells may survive the exposure and continue to synthesize and secrete insulin in response to elevation in blood glucose.

Does this mean that alloxan is good for type 2 DM models?

alloxan is not for type 2 diabetes , it is for type 1diabetes.

if u want to produce type 2 then use STZ, Dexamethasone and fructose in albino rats.

Shafqat Rasul

sir, if u just search on google u will get a very nice paper related to preclinical animal models for diabetes.

in which u will get different dose according to route. but sir normally in practice most of the pepole using the i.m. route of 120 and 150 mg/kg by using freshly prepared saline solution. according to supplier change the purity of alloxan which leads to changes in the dose.

u have to standardize the dose before starting the animal model, which is time consuming process but it help much for accurate result of u r drugs.

best luck........

Absolutely. But the bottom line remains that alloxan is not a very reliable model for induction of diabetes as the rate of induction is low and the chances of recovery are very high in the diabetic rats. If use of alloxan is not an absolute necessity (arising of financial restrains) i would suggest opting for STZ induced diabetes model.

Financial restrains are forcing me to use it. Induction of alloxan dose depends upon the antioxidant reserves of animals, how far this statement is true?

That is troublesome. regarding the antioxidant status having an effect on induction of diabetes, i am not a very big fan of antioxidants. the reason being even a process like respiration and the basic metabolic processed of our body lead to the production of ROS. Just an antioxidant approach to a disease state is therefore not entirely plausible. However, replenishing the antioxidant status to act as an adjuvant is definitely possible.

As far as oxidant status and induction of diabetes is concerned, there is a hypothesis that supports this. reason being, both STZ and alloxan are known to produce DNA damage by generating ROS and intercalating with the nucleic acids. so, if the antioxidant machinery in the cell is robust, this damage can theoretically be reduced. i hope this helps you.

I have come across that alloxan produces ROS and they can produce DNA breaks and this cause damage as one of the possible mechanism to pancreatic beta cell damage. DNA breaks can be revesible but streptozotocin is causing alkylation of DNA and results in permanent damage. Alloxan causes reversible diabetes but streptozotocin causes irreversible due to these reasons.

what you mention here is one of the hypothesis. it is true that alloxan mainly produces chain breaks (Whereas STZ produces alkylation and also intercalates), but even this predisposes the cell to apoptosis. how the cells recover from this damage is still not known. one flaw in this hypothesis is that generation of ROS takes place in the cytosol, where the antioxidants come into action. how these ROS escape the antioxidant enzymes in the cytosol and move into the nuclus and selectively act on DNA is not clear.

Sir i suggest you to proceed with stz .this is reliable. For dose range search in gooogle you can find number of articles.

If you still find a problem pls mail me i'll send articles related through mail.

thank you sir, i hav already mentioned that it is not possible to obtain Stz , alloxan is the only option.

I have used Alloxan in rats and got good results but after a long trial and founding out the root and ‎doses.‎

The best root of administration is SC in the head of the animals or on the back. And the dose for male rats ‎‎100 mg/kg and for females 90 mg/kg of Sigma Alloxan monohydrate (which gives a clear pink color ‎after dissolving it in distilled water.

Alloxan and STZ is very tricky. Injection speed and dissolving timing are very influence to the result.

When you use alloxan, the dried powder should be yellow. If is already pink/red, the activity of alloxan may be reduced. I normally administer it by i.v. route which is most reliable for me using freshly dissolved alloxan in saline. Weigh alloxan for let's say 5 animals in tube and keep it on ice in dark just before administration. Dissolve alloxan in ice cold saline and vortex just before administration. Injection speed should be constant between animals. After 3 days from alloxan injection, I make grouping by measurement of random fed blood glucose. Even though, the extraction rate is about 15-20% depending on how homogeneous DM model is required.

About T1DM or T2DM, I guess you can adjust the dose of diabetogenic agent. Actually you can adjust the ammount of remaining beta-cell.....

Good luck!

how to prepare the alloxan :how many gram puttiny to H2O THEN how much solution to be injected into the rat

The injection dose for male rats is 100 mg/kg. So you should weigh 100 mg of Alloxan and dissolve it in 1 ml of Distilled Water (It's better to vortex it and hide it in a dark container or you can seal the tube with Aluminum foil) . Thus you will have a pink clear solution. Then you should weight the rat and for each 100 gr of rat weight use 0.1 ml of the solution you have made. Thus if your rat is 220 gram you should inject 0.22 ml which is 2.2 of an insulin syringe. The root of injection is SC under the skin of scalp between the ears of animal. 

Good Luck