Further, whereas other studies have investigated the effects of implant placement in diabetic rodents, this is the first implant study using the Zucker Diabetic‐Sprague Dawley rat model of diabetes, which has the advantage of not relying on mutant leptin receptor, as does the ZDF model,(26) or use of toxic streptozotocin to induce diabetes.(67) The limitations of this study include the wide variability in consistent diabetes in the ZDSD model, which likely increased the variability in some of the variables and masked group effects. Here, LEPR is linked to diabetes mellitus.