Biobreeding rat

The BB rat is an inbred strain of color rat (Rattus norvegicus forma domestica ) which is characterized by a high incidence of spontaneously occurring diabetes mellitus and is therefore used in experimental diabetes research as an animal model for insulin-dependent type 1 diabetes. The establishment of the BB rat inbred strain goes back to an outbred colony of Wistar rats in the Canadian Bio- Breeding Laboratories, headquartered in Ottawa, in 1974, heaped the occurrence of hyperglycemia and ketoacidosis was observed. Extensive studies have shown that diabetes mellitus in the BB rat is autoimmunologically related and thus etiologically similar to that occurring mainly in adolescence insulin-dependent type 1 diabetes in humans.

So is the emergence of diabetes in the BB rat as well as that of type 1 diabetes before the onset of the disease by as insulitis marked inflammatory infiltration of immune cells in the islets of Langerhans of the pancreas ( pancreatic ) and a concomitant destruction of the insulin producing beta cells in. In addition, genes in the major histocompatibility complex are valid in both the BB rat and humans as the most important genetic risk markers of the disease. Also, the characteristic of the human type 1 diabetes occurrence of autoantibodies against antigens from the beta cells has been demonstrated in the BB rat. The outbreak of the disease, which occurs in the BB rat in the Old from 60 to 120 days, is characterized as in humans through weight loss and polyuria. Without insulin treatment, hyperglycemia also results in BB rats to a life-threatening ketoacidosis. The incidence of diabetes differs between different communities, and generations within the same colony, but is typically about 90 percent of all animals.

The BB rat has particular immunological and genetic issues as well as for the testing of novel approaches for the treatment and prevention of disease found in experimental diabetes research widely disseminated. It is next to the NOD mouse model, the dominant animal in the research on type 1 diabetes and in particular displaced animal models based on a chemically induced by administration of streptozocin or alloxan diabetes mellitus largely. However, a striking difference to human and NOD mouse is referred to as lymphopenia lack of lymphocytes in the blood of BB rats.