Fig. 3.

Ivermectin mediates rapid microfilaricidal activity in L. loa microfilaraemic mice. a Level of microfilaricidal efficacy in CB.17 SCID mice, 2 days (n = 4) or 7 days (n = 6) post-single oral treatment with ivermectin (IVM), expressed as a percentage reduction in cardiac blood L. loa microfilariaemias from mean vehicle control levels. Plotted are individual data and means ± SEM. b Change in peripheral L. loa in CB.17 SCID microfilaraemic mice (n = 6), 5 days following vehicle or single IVM injection. Plotted are individual data. c Differential microfilaricidal efficacy in microfilaraemic CB.17 SCID mice of oral (n = 8) and parenteral (subcutaneous; s.c, n = 4) IVM dosing compared with macrofilaricidal benzimidazole drugs, flubendazole (FBZ, single dose, n = 5) or oxfendazole (OX-BZ, daily for 5 days, n = 5). Plotted are individual data and means ± SEM. d Microfilaricidal efficacy of parenteral IVM dosing (n = 5) versus vehicle (n = 4) in microfilaraemic splenectomised BALB/c mice. Plotted are individual data and means ± SEM. e Microfilaricidal efficacy of parenteral IVM dosing in microfilaraemic BALB/c mice (n = 8 per group) ± prior immune priming (2 weeks before treatment) with s.c. inoculations of 10⁴ heat-killed L. loa mf or in vehicle controls (n = 7). Plotted are individual data and means ± SEM. Data are pooled or representative of two individual experiments. Significant differences are determined by Student's T test for two groups or one-way ANOVA with Dunnett’s post-hoc tests for >2 groups of log10 transformed data. Significant changes in paired data are tested by Wilcoxon Tests. Significance is indicated: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.0001