Introduction:

in the study of diabetes mellitus it is essential to use experimental models that help to understand the particularities of the disease in humans.

Objective:

to describe the effects of zinc supplementation on pancreatic islet morphometry in pregnant Wistar rats with moderate diabetes.

Methods:

a descriptive, cross-sectional, experimental study with quantitative approach was performed from January 2016 to December 2018. Histological slides of pancreas were analyzed from 32 rats randomly distributed in four experimental groups which were induced diabetes mellitus with streptozotocin and treated with zinc sulfate. The ANOVA parametric test was applied and a 95% confidence interval was used.

Results:

an increase in the mean number of islets was observed in all groups with respect to the control group. The highest mean value for both the largest and smallest islet diameter was in the diabetic-Zn and control-Zn groups, respectively. The highest mean area was in the control-Zn group and the highest circularity was shared by the diabetic and diabetic-Zn groups.

Conclusions:

during the study there were no significant differences in the number, the largest diameter and the circularity of the pancreatic islets between the study groups. No significant effects of zinc supplementation on any of the morphometric parameters studied were found.

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