Figure 6.

Renal injury in bacteremia is prevented by caspase inhibition and worsened by Kupffer cell ablation. (A) Kidney injury was evaluated by bacterial load and caspase-3 activity in kidney lysates. There was an increase in kidney caspase-3 activity in the severe bacteremia model at 24 h (*p < 0.001). Bacterial load was determined by quantitative real-time PCR with primers specific for P. aeruginosa and is reported as a log transformation. There was no P. aeruginosa detected in kidney lysates in the control animals or in the mild bacteremia model. There was a significant increase in bacterial load in the kidney in the severe bacteremia model at 24 h (*p < 0.001). (B) Pretreatment with z-VAD-fmk followed by infection with the severe bacteremia model resulted in no increase in kidney caspase-3 activity or kidney bacterial load at 24 h. (C) Pretreatment with GdCl₃ followed by infection with the mild bacteremia resulted in increased kidney caspase-3 activity (*p < 0.01) and kidney bacterial load (*p < 0.01) at 16 h.