Efficacy of the LaAg vaccine given by intranasal route in the profile of <i>L</i>. <i>amazonensis</i> infection in WT and TLR9^-/- mice.

C57BL/6 WT and TLR9-/- mice were immunized by nasal instillation with 10 μg LaAg, using PBS as vehicle. Animals in the control group received only PBS. Immunization was performed in two doses, with a 7 day interval between each dose. One week after the 2nd dose, each animal was infected in the right hind paw with 5×105 L. amazonensis promastigotes (Josefa strain). A. Lesion sizes were measured on the indicated days and expressed as the difference of thickness between non-infected and infected paws. B. Parasite load was measured after 166 days of infection and expressed as the mean number of parasites per paw (mean ± SD; n = 4–5) *P ≤ 0.05 ***P<0.001; **P<0.01. Results representative of two independent experiments.