Which models are you planning to follow?

For streptozotocin induced diabetes monitor random glucose (in blood via a tail vein nick) every alternate day: 2 consecutive readings of glucose >250mg/dl will mean that animal is diabetic.

For type II: monitor random and fasting glucose levels weekly for both insulin and glucose.

If you want to discriminate between Type I and Type II, you should do an ITT (Insulin Tolerance Test), Type II is non-insulino dependent, therefore animals won't respond with a drop in glycemia while Type I animals will.

I have two groups or Sprague-dawley rats. One group was injected with Streptozotocin(STZ) and the second group was injected with Alloxan.

then you are not asking the right question, both STZ and Alloxan treatments result in Type 1 diabetes, there is no need to discriminate

Both of these compounds destroy pancreatic beta cells... for T1D and T2D discrimination the first two comments provided answers

I have different idea regarding STZ and alloxan induced hyperglycemia, are not considered as type 1 or 2, because result in b-cells and some tissues injury, indeed the injury will be reversible (recovered) or inreversible (type1), therefore any type of treatments are not considered as antidiabetic (type1), therefore reduction of blood glucose following treatment may be due to recovery of b-cells.

There are different ways by which you can induce type 2 DM. 1. You can augment low dose of stz (35-40mg/kg bw) with a high fat diet on either mice or rats or you simply use diet (HFT) on BalbC mice. Please read some published work on that. Alloxan is used mostly for type 1 DM.

This conversation is going in circle.

To induce T2D, use high fat diet, obese models, or genetic models (leptin KO or leptin receptor for example).

T1D is defined by a low or no production of insulin, thus any manipulation leading to the destruction of pancreatic beta cells will lead to a T1D (such as STZ or Alloxan). While some dosage may lead to a sub-clinical T1D and be enhanced by diet, weight, or environmental conditions, it does not make it a simple T2D. Litterature is extremely vast for this topic.

The easiest way (when you do not know which type of Diabetes your animals have), to discriminate, is to challenge them with insulin.

I agree with you Marine, type1 manipulated by alloxan or STZ, and type2 only genetic model, even used of high fat diet could not results in type 2. But I need to highlight some studies findings in literature used alloxan or STZ and treated as type2. Also I have different idea about high fat induced hyperglycemia. If you are interest to discuss, this is my email: [email protected].

I will depends of the type of the drug that you're planning to use. The Alloxan-induced rats, generally, become severely diabetic and insulin-dependent in 72 hours. If you want to study type 1 diabetes, that would be a good and fast choice. Your alloxan-induced rats will have all the type 1 characteristics - severe hyperglycemia, CAD symptoms, diabetic nephropathy, and their islets present a histologic type 1 morphology (islet atrophy, perivascular infiltration and mononuclear invasion)