Biological variation of serum insulin concentrations in healthy cats

Introduction The prevalence of diabetes mellitus (DM) in cats is increasing. It has been proposed that fasting concentrations of insulin and glucose can be used for screening of reduced insulin sensitivity in cats. Reduced insulin sensitivity may indicate that cats are at risk of developing DM and motivate early preventive actions such as weight reduction and change of diet. To correctly interpret results it is important to know the biological variation of insulin i.e. the normal variation of insulin between and within cats. For glucose, coefficient of variation (CV) for between and within cats is reported to be 8.1 and 6.8%, respectively, but until now there are no data of biological variation of insulin in cats.