Your competent? doctor DID GIVE YOU THIS VACCINE IMMEDIATELY UPON EARLIER RESEARCH COMING OUT, RIGHT? NO? So, COMPLETELY FUCKING INCOMPETENT?
Let's see, over 8 years of incompetence by the doctors, hospital and board of directors!
Dementia and the Shingles Vaccine: What a New Study in Canada Found
How varicella zoster virus vaccination may provide protection remains a mystery
Key Takeaways
- Being eligible for a free shingles vaccine was tied to lower dementia risk in Ontario.
- The findings were similar to those seen in other studies, including a "natural experiment" in Wales.
- An unanswered question is how varicella zoster virus vaccination might protect against dementia.
Vaccination against herpes zoster (shingles) was tied to significantly less dementia risk, data from Canada's network of primary care records showed.
Being eligible for a free live-attenuated zoster vaccine (Zostavax) was associated with reduced probability of a new dementia diagnosis by an absolute difference of 2.0 percentage points (95% CI 0.4-3.5, P=0.012) over 5.5 years, reported Pascal Geldsetzer, MD, PhD, of Stanford University in California, and co-authors.
The analysis leveraged a quasi-randomized rollout of the shingles vaccine in Canada that occurred in 2016. Ontario residents who turned 71 on or after Jan. 1, 2017, were eligible for free shingles shots, while those who had their 71st birthday before that date were not.
After the vaccination program started, new dementia diagnoses among eligible Ontario residents were less common compared with people the same age in Canadian provinces that didn't have a free shingles vaccine program, the researchers wrote in Lancet Neurology.
The findings were similar to ones that emerged in other cohorts, including a "natural experiment" of older adults in Wales from Geldsetzer and colleagues in which herpes zoster vaccine eligibility was determined by birthdate.
"Overall, being able to demonstrate these protective effects in different populations, datasets, and for different dementia-related outcomes makes for a very compelling body of evidence of a true cause-and-effect relationship between shingles vaccination and dementia," Geldsetzer told MedPage Today.
In 2024, a study of 200,000 U.S. older adults led by Maxime Taquet, PhD, of the University of Oxford in England, showed the recombinant subunit zoster vaccine (Shingrix) was associated with a larger reduction in dementia risk than the live zoster vaccine. Later research from Taquet and co-authors showed that in the U.S., two AS01-adjuvanted vaccines for different pathogens -- the recombinant shingles vaccine and the respiratory syncytial virus vaccine (Arexvy) -- were tied to a lower dementia risk in the U.S.
These epidemiological studies provide a solid foundation for much-needed mechanistic work, observed William McEwan, PhD, and David Hunt, PhD, both of Edinburgh University in Scotland.
"A key question is how the vaccination for varicella zoster virus is providing protection against dementia," McEwan and Hunt wrote in an accompanying editorial.
"One explanation might be a non-specific immunomodulatory neuroprotective effect of vaccination. Several studies, for example the study by Taquet and colleagues, have suggested a general beneficial effect of vaccination per se or with common adjuvants. However, the benefit seen from vaccination for varicella zoster virus that uses both adjuvanted and live-attenuated vaccines would suggest pathogen-specific mechanisms," they continued.
"This hypothesis is also supported by the elevated dementia risk seen with repeated varicella zoster virus reactivation in the CNS [central nervous system]," the editorialists pointed out.
"A further question is whether vaccination is mediating protection through suppression of the varicella zoster virus itself or whether indirect effects on other herpesviruses, specifically herpes simplex virus type 1, might have a role," they added.
Geldsetzer and colleagues studied patients born from 1930 through 1960 who were registered with a primary care provider in the Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network. Of 232,124 patients born in Ontario included in the analysis, 54.2% were women.
Ontario's date-of-birth eligibility split patients into three groups: those ineligible (born before Jan. 1, 1945), those eligible for 3.5 months (born in 1945), and those eligible for at least 1 year and 3.5 months (born Jan. 1, 1946, through Sept. 15, 1951). Health characteristics at baseline were similar for those born immediately before or after the two eligibility cutoffs.
From 2017 through June 30, 2022, 10,789 patients at primary care providers in Ontario received a new diagnosis of dementia. When the sample was restricted to patients born 12 months on either side of Jan. 1, 1946, 751 patients had a new dementia diagnosis during follow-up.
Dementia outcomes for the two cohorts eligible for the free shot were similar: in both cases, analyses showed that being born immediately before versus immediately after the eligibility date was associated with decreased probability of receiving a new dementia diagnosis by an absolute difference of 2 percentage points over 5.5 years.
The statistical power in this study was limited by its short follow-up and low incidence of dementia in individuals ages 71–76.5, Geldsetzer and co-authors acknowledged. The study also was unable to determine the magnitude of the effect of vaccine receipt versus vaccine eligibility on dementia diagnoses.
The study was funded by the National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Stanford Center for Digital Health, Stanford Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience, and Biohub.
Geldsetzer and co-authors disclosed no competing interests.
McEwan and Hunt reported relationships with the U.K. Dementia Research Institute, the Wellcome Trust, Moderna, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, and Trimtech Therapeutics.
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