FIG. 6.

Cytokine mRNA expression in N. caninum-infected and T. gondii-challenged mice. Mice were infected with N. caninum, followed by challenge with T. gondii as described in Materials and Methods. The splenocytes were harvested at various time points starting at day 3 postchallenge. The spleen cells from three mice were pooled for each time point, and mRNA expression for IFN-γ (A) and IL-10 (B) was assayed by reverse transcription-PCR. The differences in the transcriptional levels for all the genes are expressed relative to those for genes of mice treated with saline (defined as 1) as previously described (16, 17). The cDNA concentration examined at each time point was standardized to the hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase mRNA levels (data not shown).