Figure 5

Effect of artemether treatment with and without blood transfusion on survival, parasitemia and body weight of mice with ECM. (A) Survival: mice with ECM treated with ARM only showed a survival rate of 50.9% (n = 53). Whole blood given as adjunctive therapy to ARM resulted in significant increase in survival to 75.9% (n = 54; P = 0.0085). Four survival experiments where conducted and results pooled. (B) Parasitemia: treatment with artemether, with or without whole blood transfusion, led to a marked decrease in parasitemia in 24 h. At the 24-h timepoint, parasitemia was higher in mice treated with ARM only compared to ARM + BL (3.10 ± 0.57% versus 1.94 ± 0.25%; P = 0.0046). (C) Body weight: mice with ECM showed a mean 24% decrease in body weight compared to uninfected controls (13.7 ± 0.79 g versus 18.1 ± 1.05 g, P < 0.0001). After 5 days of treatment, mice that received ARM + BL in the first day showed body weight (17.4 ± 0.91 g) higher than mice that received ARM only (16.2 ± 0.75 g, P = 0.0040) and not different from uninfected controls (P = 0.1391). For survival, four separate studies were performed, the results combined and log-rank test was performed for statistical analysis. For parasitemia and body weight, data are shown as mean ± standard deviation and Student t-test was performed for statistical analyses comparing two groups.