A New Experimental Infection Model in Ferrets Based on Aerosolised Mycobacterium bovis

Table 4

Isolation of M. bovis from a range of tissues taken from 4 ferrets infected with 1.1×10³ CFU and examined postmortem at 20 weeks post infection.

Tag number	015			507			780			89968
Tissue	LS^1	QL^2	QN^3	LS	QL	QN	LS	QL	QN	LS	QL	QN
Submandibular LN	0	−	−	0	−	−	0	−	−	0	−	−
Retropharyngeal LN	NS	NS	NS	NS	NS	NS	NS	NS	NS	NS	NS	NS
Mesenteric LN	1	+	239	0	+	20.6	0	+	224	2	+	11.4
Upper left lung	0	+	2.1	3	+	387	3	+	0.21	0	+	−
Lower left lung	0	+	2.98	1	+	13.6	1	+	6.7	1	+	−
Upper right lung	0	+	0.45	3	+	1.5	3	+	2.45	0	−	−
Lower right lung	2	+	0.39	3	+	2.3	3	+	4.82	2	+	−
Lung associated LN	1	+	1550	0	+	4.3	0	+	3490	0	+	9.38
Kidney	0	−	−	0	−	19.1	0	+	−	0	−	−
Liver	1	−	0.63	0	−	−	0	+	9.48	0	+	−
Spleen	0	+	0.81	0	+	−	0	+	25.5	1	+	−

¹LS: lesion score.
²QL: qualitative bacteriology.
³QN: quantitative bacteriology (×10² CFU/g).
⁴NS: not sampled.