Glibenclamide treatment prevents the development of diabetes in NOD mice.

<p>a) All mice had normal blood glucose levels at week 5. Thereafter, the proportion of untreated animals, which remained normoglycaemic, rapidly dropped with time (open symbols). In contrast, all littermates that received the high dose of glibenclamide (glibenclamide dose 2, black symbols) remained normoglycaemic till the end of the experiment. Mice that received the lower dose of glibenclamide (glibenclamide dose 1, grey symbols) featured an intermediate evolution. ** p< 0.01,**** p< 0.0001 vs control group, as tested by the Mantel-Cox log-rank test. n are the numbers of animals tested in 1 (glibenclamide dose 1 group)-2 (control and glibenclamide dose 2 groups) experiments. <b>b)</b> Bars show the percentage of NOD mice featuring normoglycaemia (open bars), glucose intolerance (grey bars) and overt diabetes (solid bars) at the end of the 25 wk experiment. n are numbers of mice investigated in 1 (glibenclamide dose 1 group)-2 (control and glibenclamide dose 2 groups) experiments. No error bars are given in panels a) and b) given that these graphs show a single percentage value calculated for the entire mouse population tested. ***p< 0.001 vs control group, ^§§§p < 0.001 vs glibenclamide dose 1 group, as tested by the Chi square test. <b>c)</b> After a glucose challenge untreated mice surviving till the week 25 (open symbols) displayed a sustained hyperglycaemia indicating glucose intolerance, whereas the glibenclamide-treated mice rapidly returned to normoglycaemia. Data are mean + SEM values of glycaemias from an experiment that tested in parallel the 3 groups of NOD mice. *** p< 0.001 compared to the glibenclamide-treated groups, as tested by ANOVA. n are numbers of mice investigated.