Effect of an aldose reductase inhibitor and an anticoagulant on electroretinogram in sucrose-fed diabetic rats. Hotta, Nigishi, Jiro Nakamura, Fumihiko Sakakibara, Yoji Hamada, Tomohiro Hara, Koichi Mori, Eitaro Nakashima, Hiromitsu Sasaki, Naoto Kasama, Shinji Inukai, and Naoki Koh. The Third Department of Internal Medicine, Nagoya University School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japan, Research Department, Wakamoto Pharmaceutical Co., Kanagawa, Japan
APStracts 4:0174E, 1997.
To investigate the role of increased polyol pathway activity and hemodynamic deficits in the pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy in non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM), Otsuka Long-Evans Tokushima fatty (OLETF) rats, an animal model of human NIDDM, were given water with or without 30% sucrose and some of them were fed laboratory chow containing 0.03% cilostazol, an anticoagulant, or 0.05% TAT, an aldose reductase inhibitor for 8 weeks. Long-Evans Tokushima Otsuka (LETO) rats were used as nondiabetic controls. The peak latencies of oscillatory potentials of electroretinogram in sucrose-fed OLETF rats were significantly prolonged compared with those in OLETF rats without sucrose feeding and LETO rats. There was a marked increase in platelet aggregability and a significant decrease in erythrocyte 2,3-diphosphoglycerate in sucrose-fed OLETF rats. Cilostazol significantly improved these parameters without changes in retinal levels of sorbitol and fructose. TAT, however, ameliorated all of these parameters. These findings confirm that the sucrose-fed OLETF rat is a useful animal model of retinopathy in human NIDDM, and suggest that cilostazol improved diabetic retinopathy by modifying vascular factors, not by altering polyol pathway activity.

Received 7 February 1997; accepted in final form 24 July 1997.
APS Manuscript Number E59-7.
Article publication pending Am. J. Physiol. (Endocrinol. Metab.).
ISSN 1080-4757 Copyright 1997 The American Physiological Society.
Published in APStracts on 27 August 1997