ABSTRACT
Syndromes resembling human diabetes occur spontaneously in some animal species. Alternatively they can also be induced by treating animals with drugs or viruses, excising their pancreases or manipulating their diet. Of course, none of the known animals models can be taken to reproduce human diabetes, but they are believed to illustrate various types of aetiological and pathogenic mechanisms that most probably also operate in humans. Among these models, diabetes induced in rats by neonatal streptozotocin administration (the so called n-STZ models) has been recognized during the last two decades, as adequate tools to study the long-term consequences of a gradually reduced B-cell mass [Weir et al., 1986; Grill and Östenson, 1988; Portha et al., 1990]: we and others have found that defects in insulin secretion and action which in many ways resemble those described in human NIDDM, develop in these n-STZ models.
