FIG 2.
Comparison of live chlamydial organism shedding courses between mice orally or intrarectally inoculated with wild or mutant Chlamydia. Groups of female C57BL/6J mice (n = 5) were either orally (panels a, b, e, and f) or intracolonally (c, d, g, and h) inoculated with wild-type Chlamydia (CMwt at an inoculum dose of 2 × 105 IFUs) (a to d); or mutant Chlamydia (CMmut at an inoculum dose of 1 × 107 IFUs) (e to h). All mice were monitored for live Chlamydia burdens in the gastrointestinal tract and genital tract by taking rectal and vaginal swabs on days 3, 7, and weekly thereafter (X-axis). The number of live organisms recovered from each swab was expressed as log10IFUs (Y-axis). Data were from two experiments. Note that orally inoculated CMmut failed to shed live chlamydial organisms from either gastrointestinal tract or genital tract although minimal shedding was detected following intrarectal inoculation.