Figure 5.

Leishmania infantum extracellular material favours infection. (a) BMDC and BMMØ were infected during 4 h with L. infantum promastigotes in the presence or not of Leishmania extracellular products. Parasites were then washed away and cells recovered or left in culture. Four, twenty-four or forty-eight  hour after infection cells were cytospined, stained by the Giemsa method and the infection analysed under the microscope. The percentage of infected cells at the different time-points is indicated. Symbols and bars represent the mean ± SEM of three independent experiments. (b) Splenic parasite burdens of mice infected intraperitoneally with 10⁷ L. infantum promastigotes together with EXO (dark grey dots), VDE (light grey dots) or EVs (white dots) produced by10⁷ (e⁷), 10⁸ (e⁸) or 10⁹ (e⁹) parasites. Every symbol represents a mouse. Lines represent the mean of each experimental group. Statistical significance was attained comparing each group with the control group (mice infected only with 10⁷ L. infantum promastigotes, dashed line, n = 6), using the One-sample t-test. Significant differences are highlighted in the figure: * p ≤ 0.05, *** p ≤ 0.001.