Figure 4.

Quantification of viral RNA levels in key tissues of five inbred mouse strains shows no statistically significant dose, sex, or strain differences. (A) Viral load per milligram of tissue in the liver, spleen, and brain of mice at the point of death or euthanasia after RVFV infection at doses of 0.2, 2, 20, 200, and 2,000 TCID₅₀. Confirmed uninfected mice from the 0.2 TCID₅₀ dose are excluded from the graph. (B) Viral load per milligram of tissue in the liver, spleen, brain, and testes of mice that succumbed to infection with 2 TCID₅₀ RVFV was measured by qRT-PCR. A one-way ANOVA was used to compare viral RNA loads within each tissue for each strain across doses. For NZO/HILtJ mice an unpaired t-test was used since there were only two challenge doses. A two-way ANOVA was used to compare viral RNA loads within each tissue across strains and sex. A one-way ANOVA was used to compare viral RNA loads within the testes across strains. The limit of detection of these assays (77.5 RNA copies/mg) is indicated by a dashed line.