Porcine model of diabetic dyslipidemia: insulin and feed algorithms for mimicking diabetes mellitus in humans.

A weakness of many animal models of diabetes mellitus is the failure to use insulin therapy, which typically results in severe body wasting. Data collected from such studies must be interpreted cautiously to separate the effects of hyperglycemia from those of starvation. We provide several algorithms that were used by us in two long-term (20-week) experiments in which hyperglycemia (300 to 400 mg/dl), dyslipidemia (cholesterol [280 to 405 mg/dl] and triglycerides [55 to 106 mg/dl] concentrations), and positive energy balance were maintained in swine.