Replacing Carbohydrate with Fat deters the onset and progression of Type II Diabetes Mellitus in male Nile rats

Since the past couple decades, there has been rising concerns about the increase in incidence of Type II Diabetes Mellitus worldwide. However, there has been contradictory evidence regarding how the macronutrients in the diet, such as carbohydrates, fats and proteins, and the quality of the food especially fat, such as the type of fat saturation, affects the onset of diabetes. In order to investigate the relationship between different gradients of carbohydrate and fat, the fat qualities, and the incidence and severity of diabetes in Nile rats, two studies were designed to feed weanling male Nile rats five different diets with graded carbohydrate:fat ratios while keeping protein constant at 20% energy (70:10:20, 60:20:20, 50:30:20, 40:40:20, and 20:60:20 for CHO:fat:PROT). To assess the onset and progression of T2DM, data from body weight, random blood glucose, fasting blood glucose, the oral glucose tolerance test, food intake, water intake and necropsy were collected and analyzed during a 10 week treatment period of 150 male Nile rats. The results indicate that replacing simple CHO with fat reduces T2DM, whereas the type of fat saturation only had minimal effects by comparison. To conclude, simple CHO is the underlying cause of diabetes in Nile rats, and there is a strong genetic component to this tendency. Further work must be conducted to determine which genes regulate this phenomenon.