Experimental prediabetes in rats and its effect on the outcome of pregnancy and the weight of the fetuses

Summary

Experiments were carried out on Wistar rats which sustained at a sexually immature age a transient form of alloxan diabetes with subsequent stable elimination of hyperglycemia and glucosuria and with a normal test for tolerance to glucose. The average weight of 232 newly-born rats from these test rats was 7.3 (6.0–12.0), the average weight of 274 newly-born rats from healthy mothers being 6.5 (5.0–8.0). The difference is significant (P=0.05).

In another series of experiments, the term of pregnancy was taken into consideration to rule out the possible factor of prolonged pregnancy in diabetes-affected animals (Wistar rats). In pregnant animals 522 hours after their insemination fetuses were extracted by caesarean section and weighed. The weight of fetuses under these experimental conditions was 6.04 whereas in the control group it was 5.25; the difference is significant (p<0.001).

The model of latent pathology used in our experiments gives one reason to consider that the cause of the development of large fetuses in these animals is a changed, although clinically unidentifiable, production of insulin.