Table 3.
Eimeria tenella replication and impact defined by average faecal oocyst count (FOC) per bird, lesion score and qPCR quantified intracellular genomes.
| Group | Dose (oocysts per bird) | FOC (Log10 oocysts/bird) | Lesion score |
Log10 parasite genomes/mg host tissue |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 dpi | 8 dpi | 5 dpi | 8 dpi | |||
| 1 | Uninfected | ND | nd | 0a | nd | 0 |
| 2 | 500 | 6.67 ± 0.73 | 1.3 ± 0.5a | 1.2 ± 0.7a | 5.2 ± 0.1a | 4.9 ± 0.2 |
| 3 | 1500 | 7.14 ± 0.69 | 2.0 ± 0.6a | 2.8 ± 0.4b | 5.6 ± 0.2b | 4.6 ± 0.4 |
| 4 | 4500 | 7.58 ± 0.37 | 3.6 ± 0.5b | 3.0 ± 0.3b | 6.1 ± 0.2c | 5.0 ± 0.4 |
| R2 | 0.9969 | 0.7384 | 0.6302 | 0.9942 | 0.0059 | |
ND = none detected; the limit of detection was 4.3 Log10 oocysts/bird. nd = not done. Statistically significant differences in columns indicated by different superscript letters.