FIGURE 5.

Therapeutic treatment of PAO1 stringent response mutants and complemented strains with synthetic peptides. CD-1 mice were subcutaneously infected with 1 × 10⁷ CFU P. aeruginosa PAO1, ΔrelA/ΔspoT, and corresponding complemented strains. Intra-abscess administration of either saline (control) or synthetic peptides 1018 (10 mg/kg) and DJK-5 (3 mg/kg) was done 1 h post-infection. Lesion sizes (Box and whiskers plots) and CFU counts (with geometric mean) were determined 3 days post-infection. (A) PAO1.ΔrelA/ΔspoT dermonecrosis measurements. (B) PAO1.ΔrelA/ΔspoT CFU counts/abscess. (C) PAO1.ΔrelA/ΔspoT complemented with relA dermonecrosis measurements. (D) PAO1.ΔrelA/ΔspoT complemented with relA CFU counts/abscess. (E) PAO1.ΔrelA/ΔspoT complemented with spoT dermonecrosis measurements. (F) PAO1.ΔrelA/ΔspoT complemented with spoT CFU counts/abscess. (A–F) All experiments were done at least three times with 2–4 mice/group. Statistical analysis was performed using one-way ANOVA, Kruskal–Wallis test with Dunn’s correction. The asterisk indicates a significant difference to the wild-type (p < 0.05). Data points for mice with no visible abscess or no recovered CFU were set to 1 to perform statistical analysis.