Thrombopoietin regulation during L donovani infection. (A) Circulating levels of TPO at day 28 PI were measured in the serum samples of infected and uninfected C57BL/6 mice. (B) Hepatic mRNA accumulation measured using qRT-PCR on postmortem liver samples of infected and uninfected mice. (C) Representative immunofluorescent liver images of uninfected (i) and infected (ii) mice, stained with anti-TPO antibody (green), F4/80 (red), and 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (white). Images captured with an LSM 710 confocal microscope at 63× resolution. Bar represents 50 µm. Segmentation analysis was performed with Strataquest image analysis software on immunofluorescent liver images and expressed as cell count per unit area of infected and uninfected livers (D) and MFI of TPO⁺ cells in infected livers (E). MFIs were calculated for TPO⁺ hepatocytes at 0 to 30 µm and 30 to 60 µm from the margin of granuloma in infected mice. Data are representative of 5 uninfected and 5 infected mice from a single experiment, analyzed with the unpaired Student t test (A-B) and the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test (D-E). **P < .01; ***P < .001; ****P < .0001.