tDespite the many efforts made by the scientific community in the development of vaccine candidatesagainst dengue virus (DENV), no vaccine has been licensed up to date. Although the immunopatho-genesis associated to the disease is a key factor to take into account by vaccine developers, the lackof animal models that reproduce the clinical signs of the disease has hampered the vaccine progress.Non-human primates support viral replication, but they are very expensive and do not show signs ofdisease. Immunocompromised mice develop viremia and some signs of the disease; however, they arenot valuable for vaccine testing. Nowadays, immunocompetent mice are the most used model to evaluatethe immunogenicity of vaccine candidates. These animals are resistant to DENV infection; therefore, theintracranial inoculation with neuroadapted virus, which provokes viral encephalitis, represents an alter-native to evaluate the protective capacity of vaccine candidates. Previous results have demonstrated thecrucial role of cellular immune response in the protection induced by the virus and vaccine candidatesin this mouse encephalitis model. However, in the present work we are proposing that the magnitudeof the cell-mediated immunity and the inflammatory response generated by the vaccine can modulatethe survival rate after viral challenge. We observed that the intracranial challenge of naïve mice withDENV-2 induces the recruitment of immune cells that contribute to the reduction of viral load, but doesnot increase the survival rate. On the contrary, animals treated with cyclophosphamide, an immunosup-pressive drug that affects proliferating lymphocytes, had a higher viral load but a better survival rate thanuntreated animals. These results suggest that the immune system is playing an immunopathogenic rolein this model and the survival rate may not be a suitable endpoint in the evaluation of vaccine candidatesbased on antigens that induce a strong cellular immune response.© 2016 European Federation of Immunological Societies. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.