Figure 7. CHIKV infection in mouse neonates.

A) Kaplan–Meier plots representing the survival of FVB (WT) and GADD34^ΔC/ΔC mouse neonates 9-day-old (n = 11 per group) (upper panel) or 12-day-old (n = 14 per group) (lower panel) after intradermal inoculation with 10⁶ PFU of CHIKV and observed for 21 days. B) Left panel, viral titers in different tissues and serum of 12-day-old mice inoculated with 10⁶ PFU of CHIKV via the intradermal route. Mice were sacrificed 5 days after infection and the amount of infectious virus in serum and tissues quantified by TCID50 (see methods) (n = 5). In addition of considerably increased levels of viral replication in CHIKV target tissues, GADD34^ΔC/ΔC neonates also display signs of heart infection. Right panel, Quantification of IFN-β for the same different tissues, CHIKV-infected target tissues of GADD34^ΔC/ΔC mice produced less IFN-β than WT. C) 17-day-old mice were infected with 10⁶ PFU of CHIKV via the intradermal route, and sacrificed 72 h later. Quantification of viral titers and IFN-β/viral titers ratio is presented for different tissues. A broken line indicates the detection threshold. In B and C represented data are arithmetic mean ± standard deviation, n = 5. In B and C p values were calculated using a Student's t test, *p≤0.1, **p≤0.05.