Urine glucose levels are disordered before blood glucose level increase was observed in Zucker diabetic fatty rats

Many patients with diabetes are not diagnosed at all or are diagnosed too late to be effectively treated, resulting in nonspecific symptoms and a long period of incubation of the disease. Pre-diabetes is an early warning signal of diabetes, and the change of urine glucose in this period has been ignored even though urine has long been related with diabetes. In this study, Zucker diabetic fatty (ZDF) rats were used to test if there were changes in urine glucose before blood glucose increases. Six 8-week-old male ZDF rats (fa/fa) and Zucker lean (ZL) rats (fa/+) were fed with Purina 5008 high-fat diet and tested for fasting blood glucose and urine glucose. After 12 weeks of feeding, the urine glucose values of the ZL rats were normal (0–10 mmol L−1), but the values of the ZDF model rats increased 10 weeks before their blood glucose levels elevated. The urine glucose values of the ZDF model rats showed a state of disorder that was frequently elevated (>10 mmol L−1) and occasionally normal (0–10 mmol L−1). This finding may provide an easy early screening for diabetes by long-term monitoring of urine glucose levels: pre-diabetes may be revealed by frequently disordered urine glucose levels over a period.