Fig. 7: Impact of chronic phase benznidazole treatment in digestive Chagas disease mice. | Nature Communications

Fig. 7: Impact of chronic phase benznidazole treatment in digestive Chagas disease mice.

From: Enteric nervous system regeneration and functional cure of experimental digestive Chagas disease with trypanocidal chemotherapy

Fig. 7

a Representative in vivo bioluminescence (BL) images of female C3H/HeN mice that were uninfected (Control), infected with TcI-JR and (i) vehicle-administered (Infected), or treated with benznidazole at 24 weeks post-infection (wpi) and (ii) assessed as parasitologically cured (BZ-Cured), or (iii) assessed as treatment failure (BZ-Relapsed). Ex vivo images show bioluminescence in liver (LV), lungs (LU), gut mesenteries (MS), heart (HT), spleen (SP), skeletal muscle (SKM), visceral fat (VF), stomach (ST), small intestine (SI), large intestine (LI), genito-urinary system (GUS), and peritoneum (PT). BL intensity expressed using radiance (p/s/cm2/sr) pseudocolour heat maps. b In vivo BL profiles of infected (n = 8, except n = 19 at 6 and 12 wpi, n = 16 at 24 wpi and n = 20 at 3 wpi), BZ-Cured (n = 7) and BZ-Relapsed (n = 3) mice over time. Dashed lines show uninfected control auto-luminescence-based thresholds. Bar plots show cumulative parasite burdens based on area under the curve of the line plots (control n = 5, infected n = 8, BZ-Cured n = 7 and BZ-Relapsed n = 3). c Spleen weights of control (n = 6), infected (n = 8), BZ-Cured (n = 6) and BZ-Relapsed (n = 3) groups. d Post-treatment in vivo BL infection profiles for individual BZ-Relapsed mice; thresholds as in (b). e Mean tissue-specific infection intensities in untreated and relapsed infections. Circle size indicates the percentage of individual animals with BL-positive (BL+) signal for each sample type; colour indicates infection intensity (fold change in ex vivo BL vs uninfected controls). f Tissue-specific infection intensities for gut, heart, skeletal muscle and skin of control (n = 6) infected (n = 8), BZ-Cured (n = 6) and BZ-Relapsed (n = 3) mice. Data expressed as mean fold change in radiance vs. uninfected mean. Threshold line is the mean for an internal control (empty) region of interest. Box plots show the median with minimum and maximum values as whiskers; the bounds of the box show IQR. All other data are expressed as mean ± SEM. Statistical significance was tested using a two-sided t-test or one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s HSD test. Only significant differences are annotated: *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, **** P < 0.0001.

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