High-grade bacteremia is prerequisite to myocardial invasion and myocardial damage.

A) Bacterial burden of different strains of pneumococci circulating in the blood at designated time points following i.p. challenge of mice (n = 6 mice per strain). Points represent the average titer for the mice infected with each strain. Dashed line indicates limit of detection. B) Linear Regression analysis of pneumococcal burden recovered from the heart versus the pneumococcal burden in the blood of the same mice (n = 6 mice per strain). C) Linear Regression analysis of detectable troponin-I (cTn-I) in the blood of infected mice correlated versus pneumococcal burden recovered from the heart of the same mice (n = 3 mice per strain). Note, the limit of detection for the cTn-I ELISA is 0.156 ng/mL. Data are represented as mean ± SEM.