It does indicate the effect does wear off and they recommend a booster. They also note that the newer recombinant vaccine has a longer term effectiveness, at least as a shingles vaxx, Not sure if that translates to increased duration in preventing the various dementia listed but it should. If the virus is a contributor, which from this study is a yes.
They also mention there is a benefit even for people at 70. We got ours at 65, a free program here in the Great White North.
This seems to indicate they compared vaccines but I couldn’t find that in the paper
That quote was from an article, not from the study. I and many others passed along bad info.
After reading more, the study was based on the live versions as the recombinant was introduced later and the results fell outside the follow-up time frame. They do note the benefits of the recombinant version should be longer lasting.
This error in the “reporting” on the study may be one reason there is confusion and deleted posts by other people.
Thanks for the info. I think I’ll opt for the shingles.
The Nature paper is back online, it looks like it’s a preprint: The recombinant shingles vaccine is associated with lower risk of dementia | Nature Medicine
Covered in New Scientist:
Being immunised against shingles has been linked to a reduced dementia risk before and now a study suggests that the newer vaccine wards off the condition more effectively than an older one
The latest shingles vaccine may delay or possibly even prevent the onset of dementia more effectively than an older version.
Being vaccinated against shingles has been linked to dementia protection before. Now, it seems that a vaccine called Shingrix, which has been available since 2017, reduces the risk of developing the condition in the next six years by 17 per cent more than an older vaccine called Zostavax.
…
Richard Lathe at the University of Edinburgh in the UK points out that multiple kinds of vaccines are associated with reduced dementia rates. For example, the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, which protects against tuberculosis and can be used to treat bladder cancer, has been linked to a 45 per cent reduced dementia risk.
The results could therefore be due to vaccines giving the body a general immune boost rather than protection from shingles specifically reducing our dementia risk, says Lathe.
Read the full story: Evidence mounts that shingles vaccines protect against dementia (New Scientist)
Nature Medicine DOI: 10.1038/s41591-024-03201-5
You’re not saying you’d prefer getting shingles over getting the vaccine?
Is anyone finding evidence that it “prevents” dementia? I’m only reading that it delays onset.
For a neurodegenerative disease that anyone will get at some point or another (if they live long enough), most academics use “prevent” to mean “delay onset”. It makes sense theoretically: if the vaccine delays the onset by an average of say 2 years and if you get vaccinated every year then you might be able to delay the onset forever, so to prevent the disease. Unfortunately researchers rarely quantify what that delay is in practice.
Added benefit, I can attest that Shingles hurts A LOT it’s right in the nerves themselves
And possible for it to affect places of varying levels of tortuous zones
Worth avoiding
Shingles of the eye can cause blindness. It’s very serious. The newer vaccine is recommended for older persons and those who have had shingles. It’s that connection between the eye and brain that gives this ocular form of shingles most concern for dementia risk. Peter Attia discusses dementia and the shingles vaccine in a Nov 2024 weekly newsletter and he too is reserved and cautious about the shingles vaccine and dementia prevention.
Two (or 3?) papers looked at the date of introduction of the vaccine, in two countries, and found a reduced risk before / after with this natural experiment. So if these papers are correct then the healthy user hypothesis could be discarded. That being said I agree with his conclusion: we don’t know yet and let’s follow the guidelines for now: everyone above 50 should get the shingles vaccine. Neuroprotection might come as a perk or not. The question remains for people below 50.
I’m not following. How does this r/o healthy user?
Let’s say the vaccine is introduced for people born after March 3rd 1950 and you show that people born in the weeks after that date have 20% less dementia than people born before. There’s the same % of healthy people born in March 2nd and March 3rd. The difference is not different healthy behaviors between these cohorts due to an arbitrary date picked in the calendar. It’s the vaccine. That’s what they did (if I reckon correctly).
But that’s true only if everyone receives that vaccine. If vaccine is Optional then maybe healthy people are choosing the vaccine?
The effect is irrespective of being vaccinated or not: Causal evidence that herpes zoster vaccination prevents a proportion of dementia cases 2023 (
Preprint but Stanford + CZI)
Before the cutoff date: no one is vaccinated (0.01%). After the cutoff date: half the population is (47.2%). And overall, no matter their vaccination status, people born after the cutoff date had a lower rate of dementia.
Other researchers (Oxford & UCL) looked at the cutoff date for the new shingles vaccine and also found that people who got the new one in the 6 months following the change had lower rates of dementia compared to people who got the “old”/less effective one 6 months before the change: The recombinant shingles vaccine is associated with lower risk of dementia 2024. Here again, these people are as healthy. It’s just that some got the new vax, some got the old one, because the version was changed at the national level.
I think there were one or two other papers replicating these findings in Australia. Should these preprints be peer-reviewed and confirmed, then the evidence will seem compelling to me.
Here’s the “Australian” one: Herpes zoster vaccination and new diagnoses of dementia: A quasi-randomized study in Australia 2024 Also a preprint, by the same Stanford/CZI research team as the 2023 one above.
If it happened instantly, and it didn’t matter whether you were vaccinated, then the results are not attributable directly to the vaccine. At least I don’t see a mechanism for that.
Because 50% of the population born after the cutoff date is vaccinated. So of course the results are attributable directly to the vaccine. But because we look at the whole cohort, and not only vaccinated people, we exclude the “healthy user” effect.
