Breakthrough: Shingles Shot Linked to Lower Dementia Risk 

Breakthrough: Shingles Shot Linked to Lower Dementia Risk. Credit | Shutterstock
Breakthrough: Shingles Shot Linked to Lower Dementia Risk. Credit | Shutterstock

United States: Experts have provided a prospect of delaying dementia after a recently approved shingles vaccine was proven to prevent approximately one-third of dementia diagnoses within six years of immunization. 

More about the finding 

The study using American medical records proves that apart from the improvement of the risks of getting shingles, a painful and, at times, severe disease in elderly people, the vaccine may also retard dementia which is the most common cause of death in the UK, as observed in the research. 

The study’s first author, Dr Maxime Taquet at the University of Oxford, said the results support the idea that shingles vaccination may prevent dementia. “If validated in clinical trials, these findings could have significant implications for older adults, health services, and public health,” the Guardian reported. 

Breakthrough: Shingles Shot Linked to Lower Dementia Risk. Credit | PA
Breakthrough: Shingles Shot Linked to Lower Dementia Risk. Credit | PA

Thus, shingles affects people affected by the herpes zoster virus and can reoccur from chickenpox. Some hints of the possible effect, such as the lower risk of dementia among the recipients of the Shingles vaccine Zostavax, came into focus when it was launched in 2006. 

A new effective shingles vaccine called Shingrix led a shift to the new vaccine made in the USA in October 2017, and therefore, individuals who took the vaccine before October 2017 were given Zostavax, while the later vaccines were likely to be Shingrix. 

How was the study conducted? 

The Oxford team collected detailed data on over 200,000 US citizens who had been vaccinated against shingles, approximately half of whom had been administered the new vaccine. 

Within six years, the dementia rates were found to be 17 percent lower in people receiving Shingrix than in those who received Zostavax. 

For those who progressed to dementia, that is an additional 164 days, about six more months, alive without dementia. As the Guardian reported, the results were more pronounced in women at twenty-two percent compared to men at thirteen percent. 

The researchers then analyzed the dementia rates in the other vaccines the patients received. In Nature Medicine, they explain that those who received Shingrix had a 23 percent to 27 percent reduced risk of dementia compared to people who received the vaccines for flu, tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis.