Figure 5.

B. abortus infection induces anemia in both human and mice. (a and b) wt CD45.1 and CD150^−/− CD45.1 mice were intraperitoneally inoculated with 1 × 10⁶ CFU of B. abortus. (a) Frequency of MEP (lin⁻, Sca⁻, cKit⁺, CD34⁻, CD16/32⁻), in lin⁻ BM cells 8 d after infection is shown for mice injected with PBS (Mock, unfilled circle) or inoculated with 1 × 10⁶ CFU of Ba WT (black square), B. abortus ∆omp25 (Ba ∆omp25; gray square), or B. abortus ∆omp25 complemented with p:Omp25 (Ba ∆omp25c; unfilled square) mutants (the latter only for wt mice; from left to right: n = 16, 16, 8, 8, 8, 7, 9). (b) 8 d after infection, the percentage of hematocrit measured in blood is shown for mice injected with PBS (Mock, unfilled circle) or inoculated with 1 × 10⁶ CFU of Ba WT (black square), Ba ∆omp25 (gray square; from left to right:, n = 7, 7, 6, 5, 8, 8). Data were obtained from distinct samples from three independent experiments (a and b), each with at least n = 4 animals per condition, are shown and mean ± SEM is represented by a horizontal bar. Significant differences from mock are shown. **, P < 0.01; *, P < 0.05. Absence of P value or ns, non-significant. Since data did not follow a normal distribution, P values were generated using Kruskal–Wallis followed by Dunn’s test. (c) Percentage of brucellosis patients (men and women) that present anemia before antibiotic treatment. Anemia was characterized by a decrease of hematocrit, hemoglobin, and erythrocytes (hematocrit <40% for men and <35% for women; hemoglobin <14 g/dl for men and <12 g/dl for women; erythrocyte count <4 million for men and <3.8 million/mm³ for women).