Figure 11.

In vitro erythrocyte aggregation assay of uninfected blood mixed with plasma from uninfected mice and plasma from infected mice that was unaltered (infected), centrifuged, or centrifuged and heated. The assay method is described in the text. (A) Panel A shows a microtiter plate for which the source of plasma was from immunocompetent BALB/c mice (five uninfected or five infected); (B) Panel B is a box-whisker graph of the blood cell dispersion as estimated by image analysis and expressed as the percentage of each of four experimental conditions’ values to the mean of the uninfected values. The 12 infected SCID mice were divided into a group of eight with a high spirochete burden (10⁷ cells/mL) and a group of four with a moderate spirochete burden (10⁶ cells/mL) in the plasma. There were five infected BALB/c mice.