Persistence of Brucella abortus in the Bone Marrow of Infected Mice

Figure 1

B. abortus persists in bone marrow during the course of infection. Mice were infected with B. abortus-RFP. (a) Spleen, lymph nodes, and BM were collected, and CFUs determined at different phases of infection [23]: the onset of infection (I), the acute phase (II), the chronic steady phase (III), and the chronic declining phase (IV). Each bar is the mean (±1 SD) of an experiment. Values of are indicated in relation to spleen and lymph node bacterial loads. (b) Before CFU determination, the spleens were weighted at each time of examination. (c) BM cells were isolated from the tibia and femur of B. abortus-RFP- (red intracellular bacteria) infected mice at 8 and 30 days of postinfection mounted using ProLong Gold containing DAPI (blue nuclei). Microscope images are captured at 60x magnification confocal microscope.

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