Hi Megan,

When I was in undergrad, my lab used a diet-induced obesity (DIO) model of mice as a model for Type II Diabetes Mellitus. Beginning around 6 weeks of age, we started feeding our mice 60% fat diabetogenic chow pellets (diet D12492; Research Diets®) ad libitum, and we kept them on that chow for 18 weeks. This may be a good model for you because if you already have wild-type mice, you would just have to purchase the food, which I imagine is possible to ship overseas if there isn't already a storehouse in the Philippines. Here's the link to their website: http://www.researchdiets.com/.

If you want an actual mouse line, though, we did use leptin deficient (ob/ob) mice. I am not sure where you can purchase those in the Philippines, though.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

Rachel

Hi Megan,

In addition to the above pointers provided by Rachel, you could also use low-dose streptozotocin to induce hyperglycemia (type 1 diabetes) in your mice.  This is a relatively quick and easy of attaining hyperglycemia with minimal mortality.  We typically use 50mg/Kg/day of STZ for 5 consecutive days.  This low-dose regimen works very well and also minimizes mortality and need for exogenous insulin.  Please let me know if you have additional questions.

Best,

Priya

Hi Megan,

As prof. Raman said, often used model is alloxan- or streptozotocin-induced diabetes.

This model is validated and you can find extensive instructions on methodology on the web.

Best regards,

Jan