Mycoplasma gallisepticum subsp. inoculation

Dhondt, Andre ́ A., Dhondt, Keila V. & Nazeri, Sophie, 2017, Apparent effect of chronic Plasmodium infections on disease severity caused by experimental infections with Mycoplasma gallisepticum in house finches, International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife 6 (2), pp. 49-53 : 50

3.2. Response of index birds to M. gallisepticum inoculation

The index birds are the initial source of the horizontal transmission in each group, although as other birds become infected with M. gallisepticum , these can also contribute to further transmission. To provide an idea about differences between the M. gallisepticum strains used in this experiment, and between birds with and without Plasmodium we summarize the mean summed M. gallisepticum -load across the 8 samples taken on days 4 ‾ 59 PI for each index bird as shown in Table 1. In all aviaries there was a source of M. gallisepticum infection, although in one of the aviaries in which NC2008 was introduced only one index birds developed disease. Given the very small sample sizes we did not perform statistical tests to compare M. gallisepticum -load between isolates or birds with/without Plasmodium , although the data suggest that the three M. gallisepticum isolates differ in virulence as expected (CA2008 <NC2008 Ý CA2015) and that birds with Plasmodium developed infections with a higher M. gallisepticum -load and tended to have more severe lesions.