Skin changes in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbrc.2017.06.166Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • Diabetes induced immunohistopathological and biochemical skin changes.

  • Diabetic skin showed high inflammation and oxidative stress levels.

  • Antioxidant, blood vessels number, VEGF, eNOS and TGF-β1 expression were reduced.

  • Insulin pathway in skin was downregulated by the diabetic status.

Abstract

Diabetes can cause serious health complications, which can affect every organ of the body, including the skin. The molecular etiology has not yet been clarified for all diabetic skin conditions. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the changes of diabetes in skin compared to non-diabetic skin in rats. Fifteen days after establishing the diabetic status, skin samples from the dorsum-cervical region were harvested for subsequent analysis of alterations caused by diabetes. Our results demonstrate that diabetes stimulated higher inflammation and oxidative stress in skin, but antioxidant defense levels were lower compared to the non-diabetic group (p < 0.05). This could have been related to a decreased number of blood vessels and low expression of VEGF, eNOS and TGF-β1. Finally, insulin signaling proteins IRS, Akt, Shc and ERK showed a low expression in the diabetic group. Thus, our study shows that the pathology of diabetes induced immunohistopathological and biochemical skin changes compared to non-diabetic skin in rats.

Keywords

Skin homeostasis
Diabetes mellitus
Insulin pathway
Inflammation
Diabetic complication
Computer-assisted image processing

Chemical compounds studied in this article

Streptozotocin (PubChem CID: 29327)
Ketamine (PubChem CID: 3821)
Xylazine (PubChem CID: 5707)
Hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (PubChem CID: 121494050)
Tetramethylbenzidine (PubChem CID: 41206)
Luminol (PubChem CID: 10638)
Desferrioxamine (PubChem CID: 2973)
Thiobarbituric acid (PubChem CID: 2973)
Xylenol orange (PubChem CID: 73041)
5-5′-dithio-bis [2-nitrobenzoic acid] (PubChem CID: 6254)

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