FIG. 3.

Protection against acute HSV-2 disease. Guinea pigs were i.vag. challenged with HSV-2 and then scored daily by blinded observers over the 14-day acute disease period using the disease scoring scale as described in Materials and Methods. This scale represents the standard scale from 0 to 4, except that a score of 0.5 was given for slight erythema, swelling, or papules/patches and a score of 5 was given to animals that died of HSV-2 disease. (A) Mean disease scores for each vaccine group on each day postchallenge are shown by the symbols in the legend. (B) Disease scores from days 1 to 14 postchallenge were summed for each guinea pig (each symbol shows the value for one guinea pig), and the mean of each vaccine group is shown by the short horizontal line. The dotted line shows the acute disease-free baseline for clarity, and the numbers of guinea pigs in the groups with a cumulative score of 0 are 1, 6, 8, 8, and 8 for each group from left to right. Values that were significantly different from the value for the control group (pVAX-FI-Mock) by Kruskal-Wallis analysis plus Dunn's multiple-comparison test are indicated as follows: (*), P < 0.05; (**), P < 0.01; (***), P < 0.001).