Yet another good reason to get vaccinated

Shingles can be extremely painful. So much so that some people with shingles contemplate suicide. 

Shingles is caused by a virus. In fact it’s the same virus that causes chicken pox. The virus can hide out in ganglia, typically in the trunk area, and then escape later in life to cause a painful rash.

Fortunately, there’s a vaccine that protects from the rash. But it turns out, it also protects from dementia.

“Previous studies based on health records have linked the shingles vaccine with lower dementia rates, but they could not account for a major source of bias: People who are vaccinated also tend to be more health conscious in myriad, difficult-to-measure ways. Behaviors such as diet and exercise, for instance, are known to influence dementia rates, but are not included in health records.”

*snip*

“But two years ago, Geldsetzer recognized a fortuitous “natural experiment” in the rollout of the shingles vaccine in Wales that seemed to sidestep the bias. The vaccine used at that time contained a live-attenuated, or weakened, form of the virus.

“The vaccination program, which began Sept. 1, 2013, specified that anyone who was 79 on that date was eligible for the vaccine for one year. (People who were 78 would become eligible the next year for one year, and so on.) People who were 80 or older on Sept. 1, 2013, were out of luck — they would never become eligible for the vaccine.”

*snip*

“By 2020, one in eight older adults, who were by then 86 and 87, had been diagnosed with dementia. But those who received the shingles vaccine were 20% less likely to develop dementia than the unvaccinated.

“It was a really striking finding,” Geldsetzer said. “This huge protective signal was there, any which way you looked at the data.”

“The scientists searched high and low for other variables that might have influenced dementia risk but found the two groups to be indistinguishable in all characteristics. There was no difference in the level of education between the people who were eligible and ineligible, for example. Those who were eligible were not more likely to get other vaccinations or preventive treatments, nor were they less likely to be diagnosed with other common health conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

“The only difference was the drop in dementia diagnoses.”

Forget RFK Jr. Get the jab, peeps!

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2025/03/shingles-vaccination-dementia.html

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