Fig 5. Splenic mRNA cytokines are down regulated in Leishmania infantum infected dogs with higher parasite loads.

Ex-vivo analyses of relative mRNA levels for indicated genes in the splenic compartments of mongrel dogs infected with L. infantum and classified as low (lowP) or high (highP) parasite load. Gene expression levels of each tested cytokine were normalized using HPRT and RP32 expression. Error bars indicate the standard error of mean for each group. Significant differences are indicated by, p < 0.05 and **, p < 0.01 (nonparametric T-test with 1,000 permutations).