WKY Fatty Rat as a Model of Obesity and Non-insulin-dependent Diabetes Mellitus

Abstract
In 1981, Ikeda and coworkers published the first paper on the Wistar fatty diabetic rat. Because this was the first report of an adult-onset non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) rat model with sustained hyperglycemia, it was of great interest to the Diabetes Research Training Center (DRTC) Animal Core in Indianapolis. Interest was stimulated by the fact that diabetes had been regularly observed in the DRTC (Drt) and Lilly (L) colonies of Zucker rats ( Clark and Palmer, 1981 , 1982 ; Clark et al., 1983 ), the stock in which the mutation fa (fatty) first arose.