Accelerated diabetes in non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice differing in incidence of spontaneous disease

The NOD mouse is an established model of autoimmune diabetes mellitus. Various lines of NOD mice differ in their incidence of spontaneous diabetes, e.g. 93% of female NOD/Lt mice compared with 46% of female NOD/Wehi mice develop diabetes by 250 days. These two lines were studied under conditions which greatly accelerate the onset of hyperglycaemia. It was hoped that their responses to these manipulations would reveal characteristic differences which would increase our understanding of diabetes resistance in the low incidence NOD/Wehi line. One dose of 300 mg/kg of cyclophosphamide (CP) produced hyperglycaemia in 50% of NOD mice within 2 weeks in both lines. They were also equally susceptible to diabetes induced by splenocyte transfer at 21 days of age from prediabetic 150-day-old NOD/Lt or NOD/Wehi females. Five daily 40 mg/kg doses of streptozotocin (STZ) resulted in a severity of diabetes in the NOD mice greater than in C57BL or SJL/mice. While the incidence and severity of diabetes induced in the two NOD lines were similar, this appeared to be principally due to sensitivity to the toxic effects of STZ rather than its ability to exacerbate autoimmune beta cell destruction. It has previously been shown that it is possible to prevent diabetes in susceptible NOD mice with simple, relatively benign therapies and here we show that it is possible to induce diabetes in resistant animals at a rate indistinguishable from fully predisposed individuals. It therefore appears that the prediabetic NOD mouse is poised in an immunologically precarious state with the onset of disease being highly dependent on factors which exacerbate or moderate autoimmune destruction.