Figure 5.

Abridged study design of Infection-PZQ treatment combo. (A) study design. Outcome measure = Egg burdens and rate of associated organomegaly in animals. C57BL/6 (>8 weeks old) mice were infected percutaneously with 35 S. mansoni cercariae (or exposed to cercariae water for the naïve group) and treated 14 weeks later either with racemic PZQ (or carrier solution for the infected and untreated group) by administration at 400mg/kg twice within a week by oral gavage. Two weeks following the end of anti-parasitic treatment with PZQ, mice were sacrificed and, specifically, biopsies of spleen, liver and blood were done for laboratory analyses of egg burdens, Antibody ELISA, Cytokine ELISA, Histology and Flow cytometry. (B) Organ weights (liver and spleen indexes as ratio of organ to body weights). (C) Liver egg burden. Experiments were conducted in two independent runs with 5-7 mice per group (Experiment 1: naïve group = 7 mice; infected group = 6 mice; infected and treated group = 7 mice; Experiment 2: naïve group=5 mice; infected group = 5 mice; infected and treated group = 7 mice). A total of 37 mice were used for this scheme. Data are expressed as mean ± SEM; NS = p > 0.05; *= p < 0.05; **= p < 0.01; ***=, p < 0.001 as determined by Kruskal-Wallis test with correction for multiple comparisons by Dunn’s test.