Adult Schistosoma mansoni mobility assays

Infected mice were provided by the Biomedical Research Institute (33) from which adult worms were collected by portal perfusion 6–8-week-post infection. Mobility experiments were conducted 24–48 h after worm collection using a compound microscope equipped with a digital video camera to acquire video recordings (3 frames per second for 1–2 min) of worms exposed to various drugs. Analysis was performed in ImageJ after file import using the Bio-Formats plugin. Differences in illumination were corrected using the stack deflicker function of the wrMTrck plugin. Images were processed by converting to binary format, and mobility was assayed by measuring the average difference in pixels resulting from subtracting two consecutive frames, providing a measurement of the worms displacement over that period (~0.3 s). This calculation was performed for each frame in the video, and the results were averaged over the length of the recording to provide a metric of worm movement. Unless otherwise noted, values reported represent the mean ± standard error of at least three independent experiments.