Fig. 1.
Attenuation is not the result of a host response against pre-erythrocytic stages in the skin or liver and depends on the spleen.
A. Course of P. chabaudi blood-stage infection in female C57Bl/6J mice after mosquito transmission (MT) (green), intravenous (i.v) injection of 100 sporozoites (SPZs) (black), intraperitoneal (i.p.) injection of 105 recently mosquito-transmitted (RMT)-infected red blood cells (iRBCs) (blue) or i.p. injection of 105 serially blood-passaged (SBP)-iRBCs (pink). B. Detail of the very early days post-infection depicted in the grey box of Fig. 1A. C. Course of an MT P. chabaudi blood-stage infection in female C57Bl/6J mice that have been splenectomised (SPX, open symbols) or sham-operated (SH, closed symbols).
The graphs in panel A and C show mean (+/- SEM) of percentage parasitaemia calculated from log-transformed data. Pooled data are shown from individual experiments with n = 42 mice (MT, pooled data from three experiments), n = 13 mice (SPZ, pooled data from two experiments), n = 24 mice (RMT, pooled data from three experiments), and n = 33 mice (SBP, pooled data from six experiments) in panel A-B and pooled data from two individual experiments with 10 mice/experiment (SPX) and 7–11 mice/experiment (SH) in panel C.