Figure 6. Extended blood-stage parasitemia elicits pre-erythrocytic immunity.
Mice received a first infection with P. chabaudi AS either by mosquito bite (Bite) or intraperitoneal (ip) injection of 10,000 parasitized erythrocytes obtained from a donor mouse infected by mosquito bite (Blood (MT)). Blood-stage parasitemia was self-cured before challenge (C; 98 days post-infection) using P. chabaudi AS-infected mosquito bites. Liver parasite burden was determined 42 hr after mosquito bite challenge as copy number of P. chabaudi-specific 18S rRNA. Data are displayed relative to the mean of corresponding liver parasite burden of naive infection controls (−). Pooled data from two independent experiments (Naive (−) and Bite n = 30, Blood (MT) n = 20) are presented as mean ± SEM, Kruskal Wallis with Dunn's multiple comparisons test *p ≤ 0.05, ***p ≤ 0.001.