FIG 5.

Kinetics of the dissemination of leptospires in tissues from hamsters infected intraperitoneally and conjunctivally with 10⁸ leptospires. Animals were infected with the virulent wild-type strain Copenhageni (A) and compared with animals infected with the attenuated clone of the strain Copenhageni obtained after 42 in vitro passages (B) using the i.p. route (A and B) and the CJ route (C). Analysis of the tissues was performed 1 and 4 days after i.p. infection (A and B) and 7-days after CJ infection (C), using the mean result for two perfused hamsters for all the strains. Each bar represents the mean (logarithmic scale) of the results of two independent experiments. The error bars represent the standard deviations.