Figure 3.

Virulence of CR-KP NSSTI isolates in a mouse model of acute pneumonia. Bacterial burdens within the lungs and livers of C57BL/6 mice intranasally infected with either 5 × 10⁶ (A) or 5 × 10⁷ (B) CFU of the indicated KP strains were measured. For the highly virulent NTUH-K2044 strain, the inoculum was decreased to 1 × 10³ CFU to allow survival out to 96 h post-infection. Organs were harvested and the total viable CFU determined at 96 h post-infection. Each symbol represents the bacterial numbers recovered from a single mouse. Solid bars denote the median CFU, and the dashed line indicates the limit of detection (100 CFU). p values were derived from the comparisons of each group to the MGH78578 infected group (Mann-Whitney U test; *P ≤ 0.05). Data are combined from at least 2 independent experiments (n = 7 for each group).