Fig. 1: Malnourished animals produce a sustained IL1-β driven inflammatory response in ear skin following Leishmania donovani-infected sand fly bites.

a Representative inflammatory infiltrate of live cells gated on CD11b+ myeloid skin cells, then neutrophils (Ly6C⁺Ly6G⁺) and monocytes (Ly6C⁺Ly6G⁻) at 24 h post-challenge. Number of CD11b⁺ cells, neutrophils, and inflammatory monocytes at 24 h (b) and 72 h (c) post-challenge. d Representative inflammatory infiltrate of neutrophils and inflammatory monocytes expressing IL1-β on CD11b⁺ cells at 24 h post-challenge. Number of CD11b⁺ cells, neutrophils, and monocytes expressing IL1-β at 24 h (e) and 72 h (f) post-challenge. g Heme oxygenase 1 (HO-1) expression in skin tissue lysate 72 h post-infected bites by Western blot. HSP90, loading control. h Log 2-fold change of HO-1 density relative to WN-unchallenged controls. All groups were first normalized against the HSP90 loading control from (g). WN well-nourished, MN Malnourished, SF sand fly, ND needle. Data are representative of two experiments, n = 5 animals per group, and each data point represents a pool of 2 ears per animal (a–f). g, h Western blots from three independent experiments, n = 5–10 pooled ears per group. Data shows the median with interquartile range (IQR) (b, c, e, f), and mean (h). p ≤ 0.05 was considered significant. ⁺p ≤ 0.09, *p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤ 0.01, ***p ≤ 0.001, and ****p ≤ 0.0001. Significance was calculated by pairwise comparison by linear contrast expression (b, c, e, f) and Dunn’s test (h). Refer to Supplementary Data 2 file for the full statistical analysis report. All experiments were blinded.