Fig. 7
Pingwei Pill combined with colistin effectively protected mice from Salmonella sp. strain HYM2 infection. A Scheme of the experimental protocols for mouse infection. Streptomycin-treated BALB/c mice were infected with Salmonella sp. strain HYM2 (1.0 × 106 CFUs/mouse for survival analysis and 1.0 × 105 CFUs/mouse for other analyses) and treated with colistin (5 mg/kg), Pingwei Pill (0.8 g/kg), a combination of colistin (5 mg/kg) plus Pingwei Pill (0.8 g/kg) or PBS via intragastric administration. The survival (B, n = 10) and body weight (C, n = 5) of infected mice with the indicated treatment 168 h post infection. At 3 days post infection, mice (n = 10) in each group were sacrificed, and the cecum was taken for determinations of gross pathological analysis (D), histopathological analysis using hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) (G) and organ index (F). Following homogenization, the bacterial burden was determined by plating serial dilutions of the supernatants on agar plates (E), and cytokines in supernatants were examined using ELISAs (H). All the data are expressed as means ± S.D. (n ≥ 5). **P < 0.01