Increased platelet volume in manifest diabetic rats

Platelet function, evaluated as in vitro aggregability, has been reported to be disturbed in diabetes, both in humans and animals. Platelet number and mean volume greatly influence these aggregation tests. The present study was designed to evaluate the impact of two different degrees of experimentally induced glucose intolerance on platelet number and mean volume. For this purpose, we used manifest diabetic and chemically diabetic rats. In the control group, the female rats showed a significantly lower number of platelets compared to the males. The chemically diabetic rats exhibited a tendency towards increased mean platelet volume, whereas the platelet volume of the manifest diabetic females was significantly greater than all other groups. This increase was found to be mainly due to a general shift towards larger volumes of the individual platelets of the manifest diabetic females. It is suggested, that the enlargement of the mean platelet volume induced by increased severity of the diabetic state may reflect decreased mean age of the circulating platelets. This implies shorter survival time and an increased turnover of the platelet population in diabetes mellitus.