Fig. 2.

Effect of an increasing dose of dexamethasone 21-phosphate (DEX; 80 or 200 μg per larva) on the survival of G. mellonella larvae infected with K. pneumoniae NCTC9633 (a) or NCTC13438 (c) and E. coli NCTC12241 (b) or NCTC13353 (d) during incubation at 37 °C for 96 h. Numbers in the legend indicate the bacterial inoculum size in cells per larva. The control treatment groups labelled ‘infection only’ were injected with sterile water in place of dexamethasone 21-phosphate. Dexamethasone 21-phosphate or sterile water was administered to the larvae 10 min prior to infection with live bacteria. Asterisk indicates a group with significantly reduced survival compared to the control treated with water (p < 0.05, log-rank test with Holm correction for multiple comparisons); n = 30 (pooled from duplicate experiments)