Re-institution of good metabolic control in diabetic rats and activation of caspase-3 and nuclear transcriptional factor (NF-kappaB) in the retina

Hyperglycemia is one of the major underlying factors in the development of retinopathy in diabetes. Retinal microvascular cells undergo accelerated apoptosis before other histopathological changes are detectable in diabetes. We examined the effect of re-institution of good metabolic control (GC) on the activation of retinal apoptosis executor enzyme, caspase-3, and nuclear transcriptional factor NF-kB. In streptozotocin diabetic rats, two or six months of poor metabolic control (PC) with glycated hemoglobin >11.0% was followed by seven additional months of GC (glycated hemoglobin