Comparison of relative gene expression levels in the aorta between the control group and the infected group or between the short-term and long-term infected groups (N = 5 in each group).

<p>The relative quantity of experimental mRNA was normalized to the relative quantity of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) mRNA. The box plots present medians and the 25th and 75th percentiles as boxes and the 10th and 90th percentiles as whiskers. (* <i>P</i><0.01, Mann-Whitney U-test)