Fig. 3.

L. tropica infection in mice is exacerbated by PSG and saliva from a natural vector. L. tropica PSG was obtained from infected P. arabicus sand flies and saliva collected from uninfected flies. One million L. tropica metacyclic promastigotes were injected i.d. into the rumps of BALB/c mice without (open circles) or with 1 µg sterile PSG (closed squares) or 1 µg sterile saliva (open triangles). (A) Proportion of mice presenting with cutaneous lesions over the course of study. (B) Rump lesion evolution showing total lesion size. (C) Final parasite burdens of lesions from homogenates. Each point represents individual mice. Infections performed in duplicate and representative data is shown, n = 6 mice per group. *: P < 0.05 by Mann Whitney unpaired two-tailed t-test.