Table 3. L. braziliensis parasite loads ¹ detected in tissue samples from rodents with infections established by high or low dose initial inoculum.

Rodent/dose	Tissue sample	Pos/N tested	mean	Median (IQR) 2	range
High dose
N. lasiurus	skin	8/8	3.6×102	52 (2–1006)	1–1.6×103
	spleen	6/8	3.9×102	2 (0–1110)	0–2.8×103
	liver	7/7	1.4×102	6 (6–632)	1–8.9×102
N. squamipes	skin	7/7	1.5×103	56 (10–6263)	6–8.1×103
	Spleen	6/6	3.2×102	11 (8–1641)	1.8×103
	liver	7/7	1.6×102	9 (3–668)	3–8.8×102
R. rattus	skin	1/9	0.3	0 (0–0)	0–3
	spleen	1/9	2.6	0 (0–0)	0–2.3×101
	liver	0/8	0	0 (0–0)	0–0
Low dose
N. lasiurus	skin	8/9	1.3×101	8 (5–17)	0–4.6×101
	spleen	9/9	3.4×101	2 (2–5)	1–2.9×102
	liver	9/9	2.4×101	6 (2–51	1–1.3×102
N. squamipes	skin	9/10	3.7×101	14 (5–43)	0–2.3×102
	spleen	10/10	4.4×101	25 (9–61)	4–2.0×102
	liver	10/10	9.0×101	10 (4–127)	4–6.4×102
R. rattus	skin	1/8	0.9	0 (0–2)	0–7
	spleen	1/9	0.1	0 (0–0)	0–1
	liver	2/8	4.3	0 (0–17)	0–1.8×101

1 Leishmania copy numbers (loads) measured by qPCR were standardized to the number of host gene GAPDH copies.

2 IQR interquartile range