Fig 5. Bacterial load in kidney and liver of hamsters that survived the L. interrogans challenge.

Total genomic DNA was extracted from kidney (A) and liver (B), and analyzed by qPCR performed in duplicates with lipL32 primers and probes (Table 1) to quantify leptospiral tissue load. Bacterial burden was expressed as genomic equivalents (GEq) per gram of tissue. Black lines show mean bacterial load with error bars representing standard deviation, while dotted lines indicate limit of detection. There was no difference in the bacterial burden in kidneys among the different vaccine groups (Kruskal-Wallis test, P = 0.4050).