الفهرس 
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Abstract
Diabetes is a heterogeneous condition characterized by hyperglycaemia as a consequence of defects in insulin secretion which occur with type 1 diabetes mellitus, insulin resistance which occur with type 2 diabetes mellitus or combination of both (Karalliedde and Gnudi, 2016). Diabetes mellitus is associated with increased risk of complications either acute as hypoglycemia, diabetic ketoacidosis or chronic as retinopathy, nephropathy and neuropathy and cardiovascular disease (Heydari et al., 2010).
Erythropoietin is known for its ability to stimulate erythropoiesis. However recent researches studied the role of erythropoietin in diabetes mellitus either as a hypoglycemic drug (Niu et al., 2016, Chen et al., 2015) or in preventing and treating chronic complications of diabetes (Suarez-Mendez et al., 2018, Eren et al., 2016).
In this study 40 female adult rats divided into 4 groups;
group I: 10 Rats control group (Vehicle injected group for 3 weeks).
group II: 10 diabetic rats injected saline for 3 weeks.
group III: 10 rats diabetic treated with insulin at a dose of 4 IU/day every day.
group IV: 10 rats diabetic treated with erythropoietin at a dose of 300 IU/kg three times a week for 3 weeks.
The study showed that erythropoietin decreased level of glucose 6 phosphatase and increased level of GLUT 4 expression in skeletal muscle as insulin did. In addition erythropoietin increased level of serum C peptide and level of AMPK, unlike insulin that caused decrease of both C peptide and AMPK. All these effects might help erythropoietin to decrease blood glucose level and to improve insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance in diabetic rats
Despite of that, our study found that insulin has much more ability to decrease blood glucose level, improve glucose tolerance test and improve insulin sensitivity test than erythropoietin.
In ethogram erythropoietin treated rats had normal ear reflex, normal tail sensitivity, normal foot pad sensitivity. This effect was more beneficial than insulin. Hence insulin treated diabetic rats had impaired ear reflex, tail sensitivity and foot pad sensitivity.
6.2. Conclusion
Finally to sum our results showed that erythropoietin had the ability to decrease blood glucose level and improve glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity in diabetic rats, but this effect is not as high as that of insulin. Dosage of EPO must be adjusted carefully if we used as a hypoglycemic agent because it increases hematocrit value markedly, which may aggravate thromboembolism. Epo may be used as a neuroprotective agent in diabetic patients.