Abstract There is emerging evidence that the live herpes zoster (shingles) vaccine might protect against dementia. However, the existing data are limited and refer only to the live vaccine, which is now discontinued in the United States and many other countries in favor of a recombinant vaccine. Whether the recombinant shingles vaccine protects against dementia remains unknown. Here we used a natural experiment opportunity created by the rapid transition from the use of live to the use of recombinant vaccines to compare the risk of dementia between vaccine types. We show that the recombinant vaccine is associated with a significantly lower risk of dementia in the 6 years post-vaccination. Specifically, receiving the recombinant vaccine is associated with a 17% increase in diagnosis-free time, translating into 164 additional days lived without a diagnosis of dementia in those subsequently affected. The recombinant shingles vaccine was also associated with lower risks of dementia than were two other vaccines commonly used in older people: influenza and tetanus–diphtheria–pertussis vaccines. The effect was robust across multiple secondary analyses, and was present in both men and women but was greater in women. These findings should stimulate studies investigating the mechanisms underpinning the protection and could facilitate the design of a large-scale randomized control trial to confirm the possible additional benefit of the recombinant shingles vaccine.
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Ars's recent issues with fabricated quotes were very disappointing. But
Beth Mole is consistently excellent. She has a PhD in microbiology, and is a very careful writer. In the linked article, she cites the following studies. The evidence for a reduced dementia risk seems pretty convincing, particularly given the "natural cutoff" studies:
* Cited research: "Herpes zoster vaccination and the risk of dementia: A systematic review and meta-analysis" - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38687552/
* Cited research: "A natural experiment on the effect of herpes zoster vaccination on dementia" - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08800-x
* Cited research: "Herpes Zoster…
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Vaccination and Dementia Occurrence" - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2833335?
* Cited research: "Herpes zoster vaccination and incident dementia in Canada: an analysis of natural experiments" - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(25)00455-7/fulltext
* Cited research: "The recombinant shingles vaccine is associated with lower risk of dementia" - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03201-5
* Cited research: "Recombinant zoster vaccine is associated with a reduced risk of dementia" - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-69289-0
* Cited research: "Association between shingles vaccination and slower biological aging: Evidence from a U.S. population-based cohort study" - https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/advance-article/doi/10.1093/gerona/glag008/8430804?login=false
Relatedly, the shingles vaccine seems to delay or reduce Alzheimer's onset
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03201-5
> We show that the recombinant vaccine is associated with a significantly lower risk of dementia in the 6 years post-vaccination. Specifically, receiving the recombinant vaccine is associated with a 17% increase in diagnosis-free time, translating into 164 additional days lived without a diagnosis of dementia in those subsequently affected. The recombinant shingles vaccine was also associated with lower risks of dementia than were two other vaccines commonly used in older people: influenza and tetanus–diphtheria–pertussis vaccines. The effect was robust across multiple secondary analyses, and was present in both men and women but was greater in women.
> could be that people who get all the recommended vaccines are just in general more health-conscious and this has some relationship to dementia risk
Huh, it looks deeper than mere correlation [1][2].
The simple explanation is inflammation. The intriguing potential is the vaccines train the immune system to clear something harmful.
EDIT: It looks like some HSV antibodies also attack various Alzheimer's-related compounds, including "Aß protein, tau protein, presenilin, rabaptin-5, β-NGF, BDNF, mTG, and enteric nerve" [3]. Wild. I wonder if there is a link between the vaccination status of a mother and childhood dementia presentation.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03201-5
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33856020/
[3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6032666/
Do you have the DOIs?
I found https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03201-5
They compare people that got the old vaccines in 2014-2017 with people that got the new vaccine in 2018-2020. Some strange parts:
They say they are analyzing 6 years, but for the second group the 6 years period has not ended. This makes the comparison difficult.
These periods includes the covid-19 epidemic in 2020, with lock downs, changes in death rates and new vaccines. This makes any comparison difficult.
The comparison in figure "1 e" have very different initial slopes. I'd expect dementia to be a slow accumulation of small problems in the brain, so I'd expect an initial equal slope and…
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after some time a difference. They start the comparison after 3 month, but I expect a slower effect.
Figure "1 f" has the same initial slope difference, but there is also a strange slope change in d=1750 and the red line is more noisy probably due to the unfinished 6 years period).
> But it is much easier to read an article like this, where the same point is repeated multiple times, with some “they said this,” “they said that,” etc. than to understand even a small portion of a field. More people will do the former, and then apparently call for executions without any way to judge who will be executed. And I sit down to write code for my experiments, click on one link, and see what I perceive as harmful information, and there goes apparently half an hour. I can either let this kind of stuff lead to my funding being cut, or reply to it and slow down my research
Am I unreasonable to think that funding ought to be re-directed elsewhere, given that we 1) already have effective anti-amyloid monoclonal antibodies, and 2) they don't seem to work that well, and 3) there are alternatives, like the chronic inflammation hypothesis, that have supporting evidence? (e.g., https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03201-5)
The study in Wales and a second study in the US were about herpes zoster (shingles), they both seem to support a link to Alzheimer's and, from what I read, the second study mentions other dementias.
https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.100...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03201-5