Each dog was inoculated with carrier blood on Day 0. Overhead bars indicate samples collected during doxycycline therapy. Shaded areas, lines with circles, squares or solid lines represent body temperature, peripheral leukocytes, platelets or hematocrit values, respectively. An E. canis-specific PCR assay was used to test buffy coat samples and lanes containing the 200 bp amplicon (arrow) were considered PCR-positive. No-template-reactions (N) served as contamination controls, DNA (100 pg) from E. canis-infected DH82 cells served as positive control (+) and 0 – 105 indicate dpi with E. canis carrier blood. The molecular size standard (M) is a 100 bp ladder.