Treatment with sublethal doses of LT enhanced mortality and impaired bacterial clearance in mice with bacteremia.

<p>To test the sublethal dose of LT, mortality in C57BL/6J mice was measured after treatment with different doses of <i>E. coli</i> (A, n = 8) or LT (B, n = 8) (4 experiments with 2 replicates). The mortality of mice with <i>E. coli</i> bacteremia could be enhanced by sub-MAPK LT treatments (50 µg/kg), but not by equivalent quantities of control protein BSA or vehicle treatments (C, n = 8) (4 experiments with 2 replicates). The surviving <i>E. coli</i> in the plasma of the septic mice was enhanced by the treatment of sublethal doses of LT (50 µg/kg) (D, n = 6) (3 experiments with 2 replicates). The <b>^†</b> marks shown in A and B indicates the dosages of <i>E. coli</i> and LT that used in C and D. * <i>P</i><0.05, ** <i>P</i><0.01.