Fig. 3.

Protective efficacy of experimental vaccines. Ten mice per group were immunized with the BCG vaccine singly, and co-immunized with the BCG vaccine and IL-12 DNA or IL-18 DNA vaccine. Immunized mice were infected by aerosol exposure with virulent M. tuberculosis H37Rv. The number of CFUs was measured in the lungs (A) and spleens (B) of five mice per group at 30 and 90 days post-challenge. The level of protection of experimental vaccines was calculated as CFUs in the naïve minus CFUs in the vaccinated mice. Data are represented as log₁₀ CFU±SD, where n=5 and data is representative of two experiments. The ANOVA test was used to determine the significance of differences between experimental groups. p-value less than 0.05 was considered as significant and represented as follows; ^*p<0.05, ^**p<0.01, and ^***p<0.001. BCG, bacillus Calmette-Guérin; CFU, colony forming unit; ANOVA, analysis of variance.