I needed to go to Laboratory Animal Unit earlier yesterday. Had to change the wet bedding. Almost everyday I change the bedding since I'm dealing with the diabetic rats. Some of the behaviors of diabetic rats are having a large amount of water and consuming more pellets (foods) and of course a lot urine waste. Yes I am happy if my rats are diabetes because I am doing a research of the effects of antidiabetic plants in diabetic rats. If the rats are not diabetes, how can I conclude that the plants have the antidiabetic properties, right?
If we want to induce diabetes, we are using streptozocin (STZ) followed by nicotinamide to prevent toxicity to cells. STZ is a very heat sensitive chemical. It will degraded if we put it at the room temperature. So we need to keep it at cold condition or easier we put it in the ice box. According to the protocols, STZ will degraded in 15 minutes time, so we need to inject intraperitoneally as soon as possible we could. Oh we need someone to help us because it is not easy to handle by ourselves unless we have a lot of experience in handling rats.
Once we induced rats with STZ you must give the glucose solution to prevent hypoglycemia for 24 hours. Then we have to check the blood glucose level using Accu-Chek meter or any blood glucose machine. If the rats are not diabetic you should not repeat the induction since it will be immune to STZ. It means no booster. It is not like injecting for vaccination.
A lot of things to be done if you are handling the diabetic rats. You cannot have any single holiday. You have to change the bedding daily. If not, the bedding will be "budu". oh no!
p/s: enjoy dealing with this research!
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