Macrophage infection experiment.

Inflammatory macrophages obtained from peritoneal cavity 3 days after injection of thioglycolate were subjected to infection with WT, pROCK, MutT or TcMTH TCTs (MOI 5). The cells were washed to remove extracellular parasites and either fixed or reincubated with medium for 48 and 72 hours. The slides were stained with Giemsa and counted to determine the infection index (percentage of infected macrophages multiplied by the average number of amastigotes per macrophage) for each parasite population (*** P<0.001, ** P<0.01, one-way ANOVA with Bonferroni post-test).