Shingles vaccine?

[dann]

Yes, and not just the high-dose flu shots:

High-dose flu vaccine tied to lower Alzheimer’s risk in older adults (CIDRAP, April 2, 2026)
In the retrospective cohort study, researchers led by a team at the McGovern Medical School at UTHealth in Houston analyzed health data from roughly 165,000 older adults who received either a high-dose or standard-dose influenza vaccine. The researchers found that the high-dose flu vaccine reduced the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in those 65 and older by nearly 55% over a roughly two-year period.
Previous findings by the same research team found the standard-dose vaccine was tied to a 40% reduced risk of developing Alzheimer’s over a four-year period.

 

[dann]

And another one about flu shots:

Flu vaccine may cut heart attack, stroke risk even when infection occurs (CIDRAP, April 9, 2026)
Influenza vaccination may help protect against heart attack and stroke even when it does not prevent people from getting the flu, according to a new study published in Eurosurveillance.
For the study, researchers led by a team from the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen looked at data from a Danish health registry from the 2015–16 to 2023–24 flu seasons to identify adults aged 40 years and older who experienced a first-time hospitalization for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) or stroke within a year of laboratory-confirmed flu infection. Of the 1,221 identified adults, 610 were vaccinated, and 621 were not.

 

[dann]

Bluetouff on X, May 6, 2026
The Trump administration blocked the publication of several FDA studies concluding that the Covid-19 and shingles (Shingrix) vaccines are highly safe. These are publicly funded works, analyses of millions of patient records: they conclude that serious side effects are extremely rare. Meanwhile, in the USA, measles is doing just fine... and it's killing.



From nytimes.com

I don't think anybody's surprised at this point.

 

[dann]

Danish RCT with Shingrix vaccine – for 65+ Danes:
Kan vaccination mod helvedesild reducere risikoen for blodpropper i hjertet, hjerneblødning og demens?
Can shingles vaccination reduce the risk of heart attacks, brain hemorrhage and dementia?

If there are any 65+ and so far unvaccinated Danes on the forum, this is your chance (!) to get vaccinated for free!

 

[dann]

The recombinant zoster vaccine is Shingrix.

Shingles vaccine may protect against dementia (CIDRAP, June 16, 2026)
Receiving the recombinant zoster vaccine (RZV), which prevents herpes zoster (HZ), commonly known as shingles, within a year of entering or leaving a US nursing home dramatically lowers the risk of a dementia diagnosis for up to four years.
The study, published yesterday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, reinforces past observational research suggesting the same.

Dementia Risk After Recombinant Herpes Zoster Vaccination in Older Adults With a Recent Skilled-Nursing Facility Stay: A Target Trial Emulation (Annals of Internal Medicine, June 16, 2026)
Observational studies report a protective association between herpes zoster (HZ) vaccination and dementia, but they have methodological limitations or examined a live attenuated vaccine no longer available in the United States.
(...)
Receipt of RZV was associated with risk for dementia being 5.8 percentage points lower (95% CI, 3.9 to 7.5 percentage points lower; risk ratio, 0.76 [CI, 0.69 to 0.84]; 4-year risk, 18.8% with ≥1 RZV vs. 24.6% with no RZV). Associations were attenuated in men and those with prior live HZ vaccination.

 

[dann]

What appears to be a vaccine effect against dementia, may be "healthy vaccinee" bias

Saloni on bsky, June 19, 2026
Very interesting talk by
@mendelrandom.bsky.social on the apparent effect of shingles vaccines on dementia.Clear discontinuity from shingles vaccines on shingles, but not on dementia, in this much larger follow up in England, using similar analytic choices as the Wales study that showed a benefit.

Saloni on bsky, June 19, 2026
Worth noting that many (not all) of the observational studies so far have been funded by GSK, which sells the shingles vaccine.Vaccines are great and the shingles vaccine is also great (for shingles), but people have got to be a little more skeptical of observational studies funded by pharma IMHO.

​

Guest Lecture 17 June 2026, does the shingles vaccine prevent dementia? (Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Science on YouTube, June 18, 2026 – 1 hour)​

For our latest Guest Lecture, we were delighted to welcome Professor George Davey Smith, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Bristol Medical School. He presented his research exploring whether the live herpes zoster vaccine is associated with a reduction in hospital-coded dementia diagnoses in England.
Working with a team of researchers, the study analysed linked health data from 6.3 million individuals, offering new insights into potential associations between vaccination and dementia outcomes at population scale.

Problems with current evidence
* Shingles infection strongly associated with age and weakened immunity: raw associations likely confounded by this
* Shingles vaccination strongly associated with lower risk of dementia; but likely this is largely driven by "healthy vaccinee" bias
* Across many vaccines, ~20-40% reduction in mortality and dementia observed with those who take the vaccine as opposed to don't
* Available randomized trials are too short and focus on clinical shingles (f/u for dementia might need >10 years)
* We need strengthened causal inference methods applied to long-term observational data, and most importantly IMO we need to TRIANGULATE such evidence (Gutierrez et al, Eur J Epidemiol 2025)

Since the Danish RCT mentioned in post 204 isn't blinded, I don't think it avoids the "healthy vaccinee" problem. The people who volunteered to participate were most likely people who would already have considered getting the Shingrix vaccination, and there was no placebo group.

 

[dann]

Another paper, but this one is not about Zostavax, the old shingles vaccine. It's about Shingrix, the new one:

Shingles vaccine linked to lower risk of heart disease for 7 years (CIDRAP, Aug 27, 2026)
In a paper published yesterday in Nature Medicine, University of Oxford researchers conclude that the recombinant herpes zoster (shingles) vaccine could lower the likelihood of cardiovascular disease better than the live attenuated vaccine, which was discontinued in the United States in 2020 because of its lower efficacy and rapid waning.
(...) Past research has also suggested that it can cause blood clots around the brain and heart, which can lead to heart attack, stroke, and blood clots in the veins.
(...)
For the next seven years, those who received the recombinant vaccine were less likely to die or experience cardiovascular events such as ischemic heart disease (10% reduction), heart failure (12%), and atrial fibrillation (7%) than those who got the discontinued version. Men who received that shingles vaccine also had a 12% lower chance of ischemic stroke.

Last month there was a YouTube video, which summed up previous studies:

Shingles Vaccines Prevent Dementia (Aug 27, 2026 – 10:30 min.)
For decades, scientists have known that there was a weird link between shingles and dementia. But recent studies have made the connection clearer than ever—and established that the shingles vaccine may prevent the cognitive decline.

 

[dann]

Jonathan Howard on bsky, Aug 28, 2026
Disgraced FDA official is very worried you might get the shingles vaccine thinking it lowers your risk of heart disease and dementia when it fact it only lowers your risk of a horribly painful rash that can cause blindness and strokes. This is his 10 foot hoop, apparently.

Jodie Burton on bsky, Aug 28, 2026
He’s wrong, by the way. The evidence (and the proposed mechanisms) are quite sound.

Jonathan Howard on bsky, Aug 28, 2026
But what if you’re wrong. Think of the enormous consequences.

Jodie Burton on bsky, Aug 28, 2026
I couldn’t bear an unsolicited reduced risk of dementia.

 

[dann]

Some adult vaccines are linked to lower dementia risk. Can they promote brain health? (CIDRAP, Sep 8, 2026)

The vaccines mentioned are the ones against shingles, the flu (both standard and high-dose) and "the Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine" against tuberculosis. See the first two posts on this page about the flu vaccines.

Experts agree that the data show only associations, so more research—including randomized clinical trials comparing the vaccines to a placebo—is needed.
“We need to understand the underlying mechanisms there,” Harris said. “We know randomized trials are really good when they’re well designed at reducing the influence of many biases. That would be another really important piece of the puzzle.”

This is one of those things that make me fear that those randomized trials might be carried out in third-world countries instead of giving everybody the benefit of vaccines because they are too expensive – as in the case of Shingrix.
I don't know if there are no animals that it could be tested on. I think it's unethical to not give third-world populations access to all the vaccines in question even if it serves the purpose of RCTs.

 

[dann]

Notice that this is not about the shingles vaccines:

First Birth Cohort Eligible for Chickenpox Vaccine Had a Sharp Drop in Shingles Cases (Epic Research, Oct 2, 2026)

Key Findings​

• The share of adults diagnosed with shingles between 2019 and 2026 rose steeply with age, from about 7 per 10,000 among those born between 2006 and 2008 to 182 per 10,000 among those born between 1968 and 1975.
• The steepest drop between adjacent birth cohorts occurred with the first cohort eligible for childhood chickenpox vaccination in the mid-1990s.
• Between 2019 and 2026, the rate of shingles fell among those aged 18 to 35 and rose among those aged 40 to 49.

 

[dann]

Deleted; wrong thread.

 

[ahhell]

Based on some of the news lately, it might still be worth for that cohort to get the shingles vaccine.

 

[dann]

CIDRAP Op-Ed: The diseases we've forgotten, like Hib, make their vaccines easy to dismiss (Oct 8, 2026)
Tomorrow, Florida's Department of Health will hold a public hearing on its plan to remove requirements for four vaccines that protect against Hib, pneumococcal disease, hepatitis B, and chickenpox. The Hib and pneumococcal vaccines are currently required for daycare and preschool, while hepatitis B and chickenpox are required through K-12.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Notice that this is not about the shingles vaccines:

Not opposing the vaccine, I'm all for that, Just challenging the statistics...

Is that drop material? At a glance, it looks like it's about the same drop as between 1990 and 1991, and not obviously bigger than most of the other drops. I'm eyeballing poorly, but it kind of looks like it would fall at the upper end of a standard deviation.

 

[dann]

Article based on the study mentioned in post 210:

Kids vaccinated against chickenpox less likely to develop shingles, analysis finds (CIDRAP, Sep 9, 2026)
Now, a study published last week by Epic Research shows that adults who receive a chickenpox vaccine will likely avoid another uncomfortable illness—shingles, or herpes zoster. “Children vaccinated against chickenpox carry a lower risk of later shingles than those infected with the wild-type virus,” wrote the authors.
The researchers examined the medical records of more than 85 million adults from 2019 to 2026 to understand how common shingles are and if the rates of diagnosis have changed.
Adults born from 1968 to 1975 experienced the highest rates of shingles, at 181.9 per 10,000 people. That’s about 26 times higher than those born from 2006 to 2008, who had a rate of 6.9 per 10,000.
The difference between the group born from 1991 to 1995 and those born from 1996 to 2000 was stark, dropping from 45.5 per 10,000 to 17.3 per 10,000, respectively, a dip of 62%.

Varicella vaccine: History (Wikipedia)
The vaccine developed by Hilleman was first licensed in the United States in 1995.[17][60] Routine vaccination against varicella zoster virus is also performed in the United States, and the incidence of chickenpox has been dramatically reduced there (from four million cases per year in the pre-vaccine era to approximately 390,000 cases per year as of 2014)

Google says:

1995: The [chickenpox] vaccine was officially licensed in the United States as Varivax by Merck and added to the routine childhood immunization schedule.