LCT and bacterial infectious disease with sepsis: The competition indexes in the rabbit lung, spleen, kidney and blood did not differ significantly from the null effect value of 0 for the SF8300–SF8300Δpvl (n = 17), LAC–LACΔpvl (n = 28) and MW2–MW2Δpvl (n = 25) isogenic strain pairs, indicating no contribution of PVL to bacterial colonization and persistence at the end stages of bacteremia in the competition model.