K. Komeda et al., Establishment of two substrains, diabetes-prone and non-diabetic, from Long-Evans Tokushima Lean (LETL) rats, ENDOCR J, 45(6), 1998, pp. 737-744
Diabetes mellitus in Long-Evans Tokushima Lean (LETL) rats closely resemble
s type 1 diabetes in human beings, e.g., no gender differences in the incid
ence of diabetes and no T lymphopenia. Although the LETL rats have been est
ablished as an inbred strain, the incidence of diabetes is only similar to
20%. In the present study, we established two substrains, one a diabetes-pr
one (KDP) and the other a nondiabetic (KND) from the original inbred LETL r
ats. The features of KDP rats are a high incidence of diabetes (over all si
milar to 70%) without lymphopenia and 100% development of mild to severe in
sulitis at 120-220 days of age. In contrast, the KND substrain is character
ized by the complete absence of diabetes incidence. Among 165 SSLP marker l
oci throughout all rat chromosomes, no loci showed variation among KDP and
KND substrains and their parental LETL rats. In this regard, the genetic ba
ckground of these two substrains, KDP and KND, appears to be uniform except
for the major gene(s) that is responsible for the diabetes. In this contex
t, these two substrains of LETL rats should serve as useful tools for resea
rch on the pathogenesis and for the genetic analysis of type 1 diabetes. In
this report, we have not only established, but also characterized these tw
o substrains, and provided their fundamental data.