Letter to the Editor on: The RV144 vaccine regimen was not associated with enhancement of infection

In the October 1, 2014 issue of this journal, Shmelkov et al. stated that “the immune-correlate analysis of the RV144 clinical trial revealed that human plasma IgA immune responses elicited by the RV144 vaccine correlated positively with a risk for HIV acquisition,” and inferred that this analysis supported vaccine-induced enhancement of HIV acquisition risk.1 This inference of vaccine-induced enhancement of HIV acquisition risk is incorrect, since the immune correlate analysis directly demonstrated that there was no vaccine-associated enhancement of infection risk in the trial.2