16 ms·

Flu vaccination linked to 40% reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease

231 points by cachecrab 4y ago

francessnt 4y ago
ajaimk 4y ago
There is a joke here about forgetting to get your flu vaccine
_Microft 4y ago
Summary: there were hints from smaller studies or studies on particular groups (e.g. veterans) that flu vaccinations can reduce the probability of elderly people to develop Alzheimer's dementia. Here, almost 1 million pairs of recently flu vaccinated and not vaccinated people were matched and studied. A large protective effect was found. Other adulthood vaccinations show similar effects, hinting at a more general mechanism. There is a section about hypothesized mechanisms in the paper [0] which also points towards more general effects and not simply "avoidance of infection". Search [0] for "Hypothesized mechanism" or even "BCG" for a concrete example of a vaccine that most likely does not act via prevention of infection (it is a tuberculosis vaccine and most people never get tuberculosis. It still shows a protective effect). [0] https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad220361#S1 https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-... (Open Access)
caromontminy 4y ago
Great news ! It’s good to know that flu vaccination has two benefits
- geraldwhen 4y ago
  Correlation is not causation. Ice cream sales don’t cause drowning.
  - itsoktocry 4y ago
    >Ice cream sales don’t cause drowning. Imagine thinking this study and those datasets are remotely the same.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > Correlation is not causation No, but correlation isn't meaningless either. This study [1] appears to be as robust as one can get without doing a double-blind trial. Given the effect size, I suspect that is in the works. [1] https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad220361#S1 https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-...
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    Correlation is sufficient to draw additional studies to add to the discussion however. And with a proper survey, you can actually account for a lot of these effects. (Ex: after accounting for outdoor temperatures, the Ice Cream Sales / Drowning correlation can be largely factored out).
wonderwonder 4y ago
Never gotten the flu vaccine before. Biggest fear in life is alzheimers. Guess I will get the flu vaccine annually going forward.
- wincy 4y ago
  The also allude to “other vaccines” in this article. Googled it and they mean the pneumococcal vaccines also gave a protective effect. So maybe get those. If you just tell your doctor you’re an alcoholic they’ll give it to you.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Not just those. Tdap shows a 40% effect size, too. Better get your shingles and/or chicken pox, too.
    - loeg 4y ago
      Chicken pox and shingles are the same virus. If you've had chickenpox, they won't give you that vaccine. But you should definitely get the shingles vaccine either way, if possible (CDC is still denying it to adults under 50, even though shingles affects adults under 50).
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        Your facts are opposite to reality. If you had chicken pox (even asymptomatic), that puts you at especial risk for shingles; not surprisingly, as it is a retrovirus. I had chicken pox, and got the shingles vaccine. They did not ask.
        loeg 4y ago
        Not everyone who has had chicken pox is aware they’ve had it. That’s why everyone should get the shingles vaccine.
- seydor 4y ago
dangom 4y ago
That's an incredible effect size. Mechanisms hypothesized to be at play: "These mechanisms—and those underlying the effects of adulthood vaccinations on all-cause dementia risk in general—can be grouped into at least three broad, non-exclusive categories: 1) influenza-specific mechanisms, including mitigation of damage secondary to influenza infection and/or epitopic similarity between influenza proteins and AD pathology; 2) non–influenza-specific training of the innate immune system; and 3) non–influenza-specific changes in adaptive immunity via lymphocyte-mediated cross-reactivity."
- fsiefken 4y ago
  Purely anecdotal; I found it odd to see my mother (diagnosed with alzheimer 3/4 year ago) behaving and talking more coherent days after her mRNA covid-19 vaccine shots. I thought perhaps the immune response lessened the symptoms temporarily.
- Fomite 4y ago
  Whether or not that's an incredible effect size sort of depends. For infectious disease epidemiology, which regularly sees extremely strong effects because of the very short causal chain between an infection and an outcome, it's not all that extraordinary.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    It is an effect size that commands legitimate and substantial attention. It indicts everyone still huddled around the amyloid lamppost.
    - Fomite 4y ago
      Agreed. I've just also seen "That's a huge effect size" as a way to dismiss observational results as probably wrong, and so felt it should be noted that for things with infectious etiologies this is impressive but not particularly outlandish (vs. say environmental epidemiology, where an effect size of this magnitude would mean congressional hearings).
willcipriano 4y ago
People who get yearly flu vaccines probably go to the doctor more regularly than those who do not. I would expect that people who more regularly go to the doctor are also more concerned about their health. I'd expect people who are concerned with their health to behave in ways that limit disease. Without a proposed method of action, I suspect this is just noise.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  The researchers controlled for "number of routine well visits during the look-back period, and total number of health care encounters during the look-back period (as a proxy for overall healthcare utilization rate)" [1]. [1] https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad220361#S1 https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-...
  - willcipriano 4y ago
    Thank you for the link. That's a interesting population, older people who regularly receive medical care but refuse flu vaccines. I wonder if that is representative of the general population.
- TylerE 4y ago
  Otoh, people who visit the doctor regularly are more likely to be diagnosed
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    That was obviously controlled-for. A study of this size would not be conducted by idiots. HN has no such filter, though.
    - TylerE 4y ago
      You should look at home many papers get withdrawn over really simple stuff.
- 4y ago
bloodyplonker22 4y ago
This article has very few details and is rather questionable, at best. Correlation does not imply causation. It could very well be that people who choose to get flu vaccines are more health-conscious and live a healthier lifestyle so they are less likely to get Alzheimers.
- ortusdux 4y ago
  The 3rd paragraph links to the publication that this article is a brief summary of. They controlled for many lifestyle factors in their research. https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad220361#S1 https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-...
- i_love_limes 4y ago
  It links to the actual paper if you are interested, the paper has a whole table of covariates it took into consideration. https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad220361#jad--1-jad220361-t002 https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-... I don't think the paper or the journal article suggested it was causal either. But such a correlation with such a large population warrants publication and further research into causation. You unfortunately chose literally the first thing that any epidemiologist would consider, which is considering potential confounders. Maybe read up a bit before commenting.
- yeeetz 4y ago
  This is a published journal article that took those covariates into account. Off-hand comments dismissing articles with a correlation vs. causation quip is so expected and tiresome, especially since you can make these comments without reading the actual article.
  - bloodyplonker22 4y ago
    It's interesting how you can condescendingly say "took these covariates into account" without even thinking about how many outside variables there are that they simply cannot take into account because there are obviously too many. Most people don't think too much and just read articles and take anything in writing as the truth.
dragontamer 4y ago
My sister who is a public health specialist, cautioned me about how difficult establishing cause-and-effect in these sorts of discussions can be in general. She hasn't talked to me about this specific case, but lemme bring something up from the perspective that we Computer Scientists can understand. Cause-and-effect chains form a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph). For example, A causes B causes C, in theory (or in this case, A causes B prevents C. Cause vs prevent doesn't really matter, its just a negative on the correlation diagrams) In this case, we want to determine if "Flu Vaccination causes/prevents Alzheimer's Disease". Now lets consider a bunch of real life factors. Wealth, Age, Sex, Race, Educational Attainment, Insurance. Just the basic stuff anyone would think about. Lets focus on Educational Attainment + Insurance to keep things simple. * Education -> Flu + Education -> Alzheimer's? Or is it the case that "stronger mind -> Education -> Flu Vaccines" and "stronger mind -> Education -> Alzheimer's" ?? Education is almost certainly a conflating situation (Education would probably cause higher flu vaccine uptake, and simultaneously would reduce Alzheimers), so maybe the Flu vaccine isn't causing the effect... but is instead just a cross-correlation to education level. * Insurance probably causes flu-vaccines (because flu vaccines are free for most insurance plans). Insurance probably doesn't cause/prevent Alzheimer's though. So we have "Insurance -> Flu-vaccine -> Alzheimer", which means we don't have to worry about a cross-correlation in this case. -------- Etc. etc. Basically: to truly understand if we have a cause-and-effect situation here, we need to think of all possible conflating factors (such as education), while discounting factors that are "along" the DAG-chain towards the hypothetical result (ex: Insurance). After that, there's apparently a lot of math and analysis that we can do. If we take the records of the people who participated in this study, and get their educational levels + insurance information, we can then account for these conflating factors. I probably messed up the language and everything else for that matter. But just a reminder that public health discussions are rather technical. There's both a science and an art to the whole process, and just reading the "results in the raw" could lead to a misunderstanding. ---------- The best example of this is "Ice Cream causes Drowning". (Real life: Hot summer temperatures cause ice-cream consumption. Hot summer temperatures cause people to swim.) We need to account for the Hot-temperature effect if we want to find the truth behind that correlation. There's also the chance that we've got it all backwards. Alzheimer's causes people to stop taking the flu vaccine. (IE: Alzheimer's might cause people to be more easily swayed by anti-vax propaganda, causing them to take less flu vaccines) Figuring out all possibilities (as well as possibilities that aren't even listed) is the job of a public health care specialist. They'll get it wrong, but hopefully less wrong than you or I would. There's apparently mathematical techniques to be used to tackle each of these questions I brought up.
eganist 4y ago
The correlation is probably loosely causative based on other research pointing to certain infections preceding a descent into Alzheimer's or Dementia. Related (not exhaustive. The infectious theory is rapidly gaining ground especially in light of anti-beta-amyloid drugs repeatedly failing in clinical trials): * HSV/Alzheimer's: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8234998/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8234998/ * HSV/Alzheimer's: https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad180266 https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-... * HSV/Alzheimer's: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29488144/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29488144/ (current independent phase 2 trial to reproduce outcomes: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03282916 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03282916) * Gingivitis/Alzheimer's: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32280099/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32280099/ * Immunological role of Beta-Amyloid: https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/trc2.12100 https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.100...
- ncmncm 4y ago
  And not just flu, HSV and gingivitis. Tdap vaccination is also apparently protective. So, probably too chicken pox vaccination, shingles vaccination, and periodic valacyclovir dosage. Maybe even HPV. You don't need very good reasons to keep up on your vaccinations.
srvmshr 4y ago
At some point we (researchers & scientists) should draw the line between correlation & causation. That there is 40% less incidence in flu vaccinated patients is established by observation, but is it due to flu vaccine by itself or factors which surrounds itself in people more prone to flu or who are medically more conscious? (edit: think of analysis of variance tests among identifiable medical & socioeconomic variables). If the researchers establish a positive link, wouldn't it be worthwhile to then suppose that amyloid plaques are somehow related to viral influenza replication - which by itself sounds a bit absurd (edit: Ok lot of good reference about infections around AD. I take this back, my bad) The alternative hypothesis is worth thinking too: Are people more prone to Alzheimer's also more prone to catching flu.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > wouldn't it be worthwhile to then suppose that amyloid plaques are somehow related to viral influenza replication - which by itself sounds a bit absurd This is a prominent theory for the cause of Alzheimer's disease [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31900354 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31900354
- lukev 4y ago
  At some point we (commenters on hacker news) should stop reflexively typing this in response to every study without reading the paper. From the abstract: > Propensity-score matching (PSM) was used to create flu-vaccinated and flu-unvaccinated cohorts with similar baseline demographics, medication usage, and comorbidities. If you want to argue that the authors did a bad job at this, for some reason, that would be a really meaningful contribution and I'd love to hear the details. Otherwise, can we assume that the scientists writing and reviewing papers did a semi-competent job and are at least as good at analyzing quantitative claims as someone commenting on HN because they are bored at work?
  - srvmshr 4y ago
    I am not an expert at this, though I have taken few credits of Biostatistics. I would be more interested if swapping the variables also gave significance in tests. Did the Alzheimer's cohort also have a higher incidence of flu related comorbidities? I understand this is difficult - but this is why ANOVA tests also are extensively used to show variable dependence or report the degree of dependence. It is unclear from their findings. Without that we are probably looking at some positive correlation without investigating the causation.
standardUser 4y ago
If anyone out there thinks there are still people who don't realize that "correlation does not equal causation", don't worry, we all know.
- bink 4y ago
  Now you just have to convince them that scientists know how to control for these effects.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    Scientists are incentivised to not control for these effects, so often they don't. Especially in papers reaching the news since they are usually "ground breaking" because they abused statistics.
i_love_limes 4y ago
Epidemiologist in training here... There are quite a few comments in this thread already jumping on the 'correlation != causation' train. While that is true, I'd like to clarify a couple things: 1. The journal article didn't suggest it was causal. But such a correlation with such a large population warrants publication and further research into causation. 2. literally the first thing that any epidemiologist would consider is potential confounders. There is a big list of covariates they included into their model here: https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad220361#jad--1-jad220361-t002 https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-... There are quite a few things that can be done to alleviate potential false correlations: DAGs, prior literature, removing confounders, and including covariates are all things at disposal. 3. Such a large sample size + previously reported findings + an inclusion of enough covariates still doesn't == causation, BUT it's important to publish and shout about so we can then look into the potential biological underpinnings that may cause this. Which by the way, those experiments may still use data science techniques. 4. If you are actually interested, there is a whole topic of this called 'causal inference' with one famous criteria list called the 'Bradford Hill Criteria': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_Hill_criteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_Hill_criteria. This list is often argued about. 5. If all of this information was new to you, please stop spouting 'correlation != causation'. You probably don't know as much as you think
- itsoktocry 4y ago
  >There are quite a few comments in this thread already jumping on the 'correlation != causation' train. Complaining about correlation not being causation is the perfect theme for the midwit meme. It's one of my pet peeves.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - planarhobbit 4y ago
    I’d say they should show evidence that they know what they’re talking about, but then I’d be accused of credentialism.
seydor 4y ago
A lot of armchair scientists in the comments. It's quite striking effect but why is it published on IOS press? Looks like there might be more worth exploring in that dataset. What are the ways in which their result could be an artifact?
calebm 4y ago
bilsbie 4y ago
I posted this exact link two days ago. What gives?
- kelnos 4y ago
  I wouldn't think anything nefarious happened. A few possibilities: * You posted it during a time of day when the site receives less traffic, and it scrolled too far down or off the New page for people to see it and vote it up. (Looks like you posted during lunch time on the US west coast, so maybe this isn't likely.) * When you posted, there was other big news or something going on that people were absorbed in, and didn't notice your post. * Some don't visit HN multiple times a day, and perhaps you just got unlucky that many of the people who would have found this interesting didn't see it 2 days ago, but did happen to be around today. * Your account was created three days ago, and I wouldn't be surprised if HN doesn't weight upvotes on new-account submissions as highly as for older accounts. Also consider that your first submission (the day before) was flagged and killed; that might put you in a time-limited penalty box. (I don't know any of this for a fact, as I have no idea how HN's software works, but it seems plausible.) * Just dumb luck. I've made a bunch of submissions that I thought were interesting (and though would appeal to a wide variety of HN readers/commenters), but it just turned out that it wasn't the case. Maybe it was just timing or something else. I believe the mods have stated that HN allows duplicate links within a shorter-than-normal time period if the previous posting didn't get much attention, so it's perhaps not surprising that the software allowed the repost.
  - Izkata 4y ago
    > * You posted it during a time of day when the site receives less traffic, and it scrolled too far down or off the New page for people to see it and vote it up. (Looks like you posted during lunch time on the US west coast, so maybe this isn't likely.) Looks like it's UTC, so early Saturday morning vs after lunch Monday. > * When you posted, there was other big news or something going on that people were absorbed in, and didn't notice your post. Roe v Wade
- dang 4y ago
  There's a lot of randomness in what gets attention on /newest. Your submission didn't get attention while this one did. HN disallows reposts within 8 hours or if a story has had significant attention in the last year, but neither of those were the case with this repost, so our software allowed it to go through. I know it's frustrating when your submission 'loses' and someone else's 'wins', but since it's random, it at least evens out in the long run if you submit lots of good stories. Eventually we'll implement some sort of karma sharing to take care of this.
gojomo 4y ago
The words "linked to" or "associated with" are tells that no real causality has been established – no matter how casually, or sloppily, causality is implied by the paper or breezy PR summaries. Maybe, early pre-diagnosis aspects of eventual Alzheimer's (such as undiagnosed mild cognitive impairments) makes people less interested in, and diligent in pursuing, flu vaccinations. (In other words: the causality goes the other way.) But also, people with active family/social lives are both more likely to be reminded to get a flu vaccine, and less likely to develop Alzheimer's. And further: more conscientious people seek out vaccines. More conscientious people get Alzheimer's at a much lower rate. For example, this study - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/210072 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/... – suggests those in the 90th percentile of conscientiousness have 89% lower rates of Alzheimer's diagnoses than those in the 10th percentile of conscientiousness. While a mechanism from vax-induced immunity, and/or fewer actual infections, to less dementia is plausible, these other well-known correlates/confounders seem a likely explanation for these results, until/unless controlled-for.
lancebeet 4y ago
It's quite remarkable that an effect of this size on such a large group seems to have gone undetected for such a long time. As a layman, I would almost have expected geriatricians to have made the observation during their own practice.
- MuchoMaas 4y ago
  Also quite remarkable that the flu vaccine seems to have a larger impact on the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease than it does on, well, influenza.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  The same 40% effect size was seen for Tdap vaccination. Although, Tdap and flu vaccination are pretty strongly correlated. It was noticed, thus prompting these studies.
jeffreportmill1 4y ago
Possible alternate title: "People with early onset Alzheimer's frequently forget to get flu shots".
- ac29 4y ago
  Given that >90% of non-vaccinated patients did not get a Alzheimer's diagnosis, this seems wrong.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    Why? You got many people who don't want to get a flu shot for other reasons. But if lets say Alzheimer's makes the people who normally gets it forget to go, then that would greatly skew how many with very early Alzheimer's gets flu shot, making it look like flu shots "protects" against Alzheimer's. And no, checking whether they had it beforehand doesn't help, it starts to develop many years before its symptoms are so strong that you identify them as Alzheimer's, forgetting rare and optional appointments certainly wouldn't be enough to say it is Alzheimer's yet. That is why scoring well on an IQ test also "protects against Alzheimer", it isn't that the IQ test protects you, it is that the IQ test can detect effects of Alzheimer's before a diagnosis can see it.
lukev 4y ago
Lots of discussion in this thread about the accuracy of the implied claim "vaccination can prevent Alzheimers", but not a lot about the correct course of action. Which seems to me to be, unambiguously, you should absolutely be religious about getting your flu shot every year. The vaccine is known to be safe and with few side effects (or at least, safer than the actual flu, which is the bar that needs to be cleared.) And even if it hasn't been conclusively proven that vaccines can avert Alzheimer's, you're at least putting yourself in the best possible cohort, right? Anyone familiar with Bayes' Theorem should be absolutely on board with this.
- runevault 4y ago
  I will say, as someone with an egg allergy it isn't so black and white. Not everywhere carries alternative ways of getting flu vaccine, though hopefully post Covid mRNA versions will become more prevalent (assuming that version has the same impact, haven't read the article).
  - amluto 4y ago
    There are apparently two egg-free options: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/egg-allergies.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/egg-allergies.htm
    - runevault 4y ago
      Yes there are versions that are not egg based, but last I remember they were not guaranteed to be available at a given location (I haven't gotten the flu shot in years because it was tedious). Which is why I'm hoping as mRNA as a mechanism grows more common non-egg based shots will as well. I remember when I was getting the covid shot being paranoid and triple checking that it in no way shape form or fashion used egg.
      - amluto 4y ago
        Is mRNA really better? My impression (not based on high quality data) is that the mRNA COVID vaccines are rather more unpleasant to receive than a flu shot. Of course, there is a distinct lack of other mRNA vaccines for comparison.
headsoup 4y ago
The study doesn't seem to call out how many numbers in each cohort actually got the flu in the time period. Also, that the vaccines are created anew each year for the particular strains of flu likely to be an issue also requires investigation.
DarkmSparks 4y ago
While this would be lovely, I think it just proves people with dementia are less likely to remember to get a flu vaccine.
- Jedd 4y ago
  > I think it just proves people with dementia are less likely to remember to get a flu vaccine. I think you may have misread the fine article. Symptoms were observed to develop (or not develop) after a flu vaccination shot.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    Dementia is preceded by many years of cognitive decline, it isn't something that just appears. A person with partially developed dementia that wouldn't get detected in a screen is still probably less likely to go get a flu shot, wouldn't you think?
    - DarkmSparks 4y ago
      exactly this, because there is no treatment diagnosis is delayed as long as possible to avoid the stigma, by the time people get a diagnosis they are generally at the point they forget when to feed themselves. Prior to that the decline can be decades in the making. My gran obviously had dementia for 15 years before her diagnosis, by the time she was given it the only words she could say was "keep on keeping on"
      - Jedd 4y ago
        Refer my response to parent. Specifically to your most recent point, however, I'd observe that if treatment diagnosis is delayed as long as possible to avoid the stigma, that would put back treatment diagnosis for both groups, so it's hardly a compelling distinction there. Anyway, I'd expect people with dementia at the time of their flu shot would have been assessed by the caregiver, and they would probably have been taken to the clinic by a family or friend anyway. The compelling anecdote of your gran notwithstanding, of course.
RagnarD 4y ago
The connection between Alzheimers and viral disease has been known and studied for some time, particularly but not exclusively for Herpes Simplex 1. The dead end pursuit of amyloid plaques as causative has delayed other research for decades. (In fact one hypothesis is that the plaques are a natural antiviral defense mechanism in the brain to try to slow down viral infection.) It's time to take a much closer look at viral disease, possibly including influenza, as a fundamental cause. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26967229/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26967229/
tick_tock_tick 4y ago
I think we're slowly going to figure out that our own immune system does a bit more damage to the host then we though.
42e6e8c8-f7b8-4 4y ago
Does this study account for "healthy user bias"?
ncmncm 4y ago
Back in April 2021, another study using >100,000 US Veterans Administration patients over 6 years found the same effect and effect size (42%) for Tdap vaccination. They then checked a completely disjoint population, in a different health-care system, and got the same number. I went out and got an over-the-counter Tdap vaccination at a local pharmacy, because how good does your reason for a vaccine booster need to be?
pengaru 4y ago
"Caring enough about stuff like your health to get flu vaccines linked to better outcomes"
Markoff 4y ago
At least one of the researchers (Paul E. Schulz) disqualifies this study, his disclosure: "Consulting Fees: Occasional advisory panels for Lilly, Acadia, and Biogen. Lecture Fees: Occasional disease state education talks for Lilly, Acadia, and Biogen. Patents/Royalties I serve as an expert witness for medical malpractice cases and other types of cases. None related to this paper. Not sure where to put this, but i am on about 12 NIH grants, none related to this study. And i have about 12 treatment trials funded by many pharmaceutical companies, including Lilly, Acadia, Biogen, Roche, UCB, etc. None are related to this paper, in my opinion." And that's just one, who is even admitting anything, the others can be funded through various shell companies which looks at first unrelated to pharma and claim they have nothing to disclose. You won't bite hand that's feeeding you. I take any research pushing vaccination (especially something like flu vaccines which are pretty much placebo with 10-60% efficacy if you are lucky [1] [2], if not 0%) with big grain of salt nowadays after our experiences with these "safe and effective" COVID vaccines, which were proven to be not so safe and hardly effective at all. [1] https://www.science.org/content/article/why-flu-vaccines-so-often-fail https://www.science.org/content/article/why-flu-vaccines-so-... [2] https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/seasonal-influenza/prevention-and-control/vaccine-effectiveness https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/seasonal-influenza/prevention-...

231 points by cachecrab 4y ago

francessnt 4y ago

ajaimk 4y ago

There is a joke here about forgetting to get your flu vaccine

_Microft 4y ago

Summary: there were hints from smaller studies or studies on particular groups (e.g. veterans) that flu vaccinations can reduce the probability of elderly people to develop Alzheimer's dementia. Here, almost 1 million pairs of recently flu vaccinated and not vaccinated people were matched and studied. A large protective effect was found. Other adulthood vaccinations show similar effects, hinting at a more general mechanism. There is a section about hypothesized mechanisms in the paper [0] which also points towards more general effects and not simply "avoidance of infection". Search [0] for "Hypothesized mechanism" or even "BCG" for a concrete example of a vaccine that most likely does not act via prevention of infection (it is a tuberculosis vaccine and most people never get tuberculosis. It still shows a protective effect). [0] https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad220361#S1 https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-... (Open Access)

caromontminy 4y ago

Great news ! It’s good to know that flu vaccination has two benefits

geraldwhen 4y ago
Correlation is not causation. Ice cream sales don’t cause drowning.
- itsoktocry 4y ago
  >Ice cream sales don’t cause drowning. Imagine thinking this study and those datasets are remotely the same.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > Correlation is not causation No, but correlation isn't meaningless either. This study [1] appears to be as robust as one can get without doing a double-blind trial. Given the effect size, I suspect that is in the works. [1] https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad220361#S1 https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-...
- dragontamer 4y ago
  Correlation is sufficient to draw additional studies to add to the discussion however. And with a proper survey, you can actually account for a lot of these effects. (Ex: after accounting for outdoor temperatures, the Ice Cream Sales / Drowning correlation can be largely factored out).

wonderwonder 4y ago

Never gotten the flu vaccine before. Biggest fear in life is alzheimers. Guess I will get the flu vaccine annually going forward.

wincy 4y ago
The also allude to “other vaccines” in this article. Googled it and they mean the pneumococcal vaccines also gave a protective effect. So maybe get those. If you just tell your doctor you’re an alcoholic they’ll give it to you.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Not just those. Tdap shows a 40% effect size, too. Better get your shingles and/or chicken pox, too.
  - loeg 4y ago
    Chicken pox and shingles are the same virus. If you've had chickenpox, they won't give you that vaccine. But you should definitely get the shingles vaccine either way, if possible (CDC is still denying it to adults under 50, even though shingles affects adults under 50).
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Your facts are opposite to reality. If you had chicken pox (even asymptomatic), that puts you at especial risk for shingles; not surprisingly, as it is a retrovirus. I had chicken pox, and got the shingles vaccine. They did not ask.
      - loeg 4y ago
        Not everyone who has had chicken pox is aware they’ve had it. That’s why everyone should get the shingles vaccine.
seydor 4y ago

dangom 4y ago

That's an incredible effect size. Mechanisms hypothesized to be at play: "These mechanisms—and those underlying the effects of adulthood vaccinations on all-cause dementia risk in general—can be grouped into at least three broad, non-exclusive categories: 1) influenza-specific mechanisms, including mitigation of damage secondary to influenza infection and/or epitopic similarity between influenza proteins and AD pathology; 2) non–influenza-specific training of the innate immune system; and 3) non–influenza-specific changes in adaptive immunity via lymphocyte-mediated cross-reactivity."

fsiefken 4y ago
Purely anecdotal; I found it odd to see my mother (diagnosed with alzheimer 3/4 year ago) behaving and talking more coherent days after her mRNA covid-19 vaccine shots. I thought perhaps the immune response lessened the symptoms temporarily.
Fomite 4y ago
Whether or not that's an incredible effect size sort of depends. For infectious disease epidemiology, which regularly sees extremely strong effects because of the very short causal chain between an infection and an outcome, it's not all that extraordinary.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  It is an effect size that commands legitimate and substantial attention. It indicts everyone still huddled around the amyloid lamppost.
  - Fomite 4y ago
    Agreed. I've just also seen "That's a huge effect size" as a way to dismiss observational results as probably wrong, and so felt it should be noted that for things with infectious etiologies this is impressive but not particularly outlandish (vs. say environmental epidemiology, where an effect size of this magnitude would mean congressional hearings).

willcipriano 4y ago

People who get yearly flu vaccines probably go to the doctor more regularly than those who do not. I would expect that people who more regularly go to the doctor are also more concerned about their health. I'd expect people who are concerned with their health to behave in ways that limit disease. Without a proposed method of action, I suspect this is just noise.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
The researchers controlled for "number of routine well visits during the look-back period, and total number of health care encounters during the look-back period (as a proxy for overall healthcare utilization rate)" [1]. [1] https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad220361#S1 https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-...
- willcipriano 4y ago
  Thank you for the link. That's a interesting population, older people who regularly receive medical care but refuse flu vaccines. I wonder if that is representative of the general population.
TylerE 4y ago
Otoh, people who visit the doctor regularly are more likely to be diagnosed
- ncmncm 4y ago
  That was obviously controlled-for. A study of this size would not be conducted by idiots. HN has no such filter, though.
  - TylerE 4y ago
    You should look at home many papers get withdrawn over really simple stuff.
4y ago

bloodyplonker22 4y ago

This article has very few details and is rather questionable, at best. Correlation does not imply causation. It could very well be that people who choose to get flu vaccines are more health-conscious and live a healthier lifestyle so they are less likely to get Alzheimers.

ortusdux 4y ago
The 3rd paragraph links to the publication that this article is a brief summary of. They controlled for many lifestyle factors in their research. https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad220361#S1 https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-...
i_love_limes 4y ago
It links to the actual paper if you are interested, the paper has a whole table of covariates it took into consideration. https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad220361#jad--1-jad220361-t002 https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-... I don't think the paper or the journal article suggested it was causal either. But such a correlation with such a large population warrants publication and further research into causation. You unfortunately chose literally the first thing that any epidemiologist would consider, which is considering potential confounders. Maybe read up a bit before commenting.
yeeetz 4y ago
This is a published journal article that took those covariates into account. Off-hand comments dismissing articles with a correlation vs. causation quip is so expected and tiresome, especially since you can make these comments without reading the actual article.
- bloodyplonker22 4y ago
  It's interesting how you can condescendingly say "took these covariates into account" without even thinking about how many outside variables there are that they simply cannot take into account because there are obviously too many. Most people don't think too much and just read articles and take anything in writing as the truth.

dragontamer 4y ago

My sister who is a public health specialist, cautioned me about how difficult establishing cause-and-effect in these sorts of discussions can be in general. She hasn't talked to me about this specific case, but lemme bring something up from the perspective that we Computer Scientists can understand. Cause-and-effect chains form a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph). For example, A causes B causes C, in theory (or in this case, A causes B prevents C. Cause vs prevent doesn't really matter, its just a negative on the correlation diagrams) In this case, we want to determine if "Flu Vaccination causes/prevents Alzheimer's Disease". Now lets consider a bunch of real life factors. Wealth, Age, Sex, Race, Educational Attainment, Insurance. Just the basic stuff anyone would think about. Lets focus on Educational Attainment + Insurance to keep things simple. * Education -> Flu + Education -> Alzheimer's? Or is it the case that "stronger mind -> Education -> Flu Vaccines" and "stronger mind -> Education -> Alzheimer's" ?? Education is almost certainly a conflating situation (Education would probably cause higher flu vaccine uptake, and simultaneously would reduce Alzheimers), so maybe the Flu vaccine isn't causing the effect... but is instead just a cross-correlation to education level. * Insurance probably causes flu-vaccines (because flu vaccines are free for most insurance plans). Insurance probably doesn't cause/prevent Alzheimer's though. So we have "Insurance -> Flu-vaccine -> Alzheimer", which means we don't have to worry about a cross-correlation in this case. -------- Etc. etc. Basically: to truly understand if we have a cause-and-effect situation here, we need to think of all possible conflating factors (such as education), while discounting factors that are "along" the DAG-chain towards the hypothetical result (ex: Insurance). After that, there's apparently a lot of math and analysis that we can do. If we take the records of the people who participated in this study, and get their educational levels + insurance information, we can then account for these conflating factors. I probably messed up the language and everything else for that matter. But just a reminder that public health discussions are rather technical. There's both a science and an art to the whole process, and just reading the "results in the raw" could lead to a misunderstanding. ---------- The best example of this is "Ice Cream causes Drowning". (Real life: Hot summer temperatures cause ice-cream consumption. Hot summer temperatures cause people to swim.) We need to account for the Hot-temperature effect if we want to find the truth behind that correlation. There's also the chance that we've got it all backwards. Alzheimer's causes people to stop taking the flu vaccine. (IE: Alzheimer's might cause people to be more easily swayed by anti-vax propaganda, causing them to take less flu vaccines) Figuring out all possibilities (as well as possibilities that aren't even listed) is the job of a public health care specialist. They'll get it wrong, but hopefully less wrong than you or I would. There's apparently mathematical techniques to be used to tackle each of these questions I brought up.

eganist 4y ago

The correlation is probably loosely causative based on other research pointing to certain infections preceding a descent into Alzheimer's or Dementia. Related (not exhaustive. The infectious theory is rapidly gaining ground especially in light of anti-beta-amyloid drugs repeatedly failing in clinical trials): * HSV/Alzheimer's: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8234998/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8234998/ * HSV/Alzheimer's: https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad180266 https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-... * HSV/Alzheimer's: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29488144/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29488144/ (current independent phase 2 trial to reproduce outcomes: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03282916 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03282916) * Gingivitis/Alzheimer's: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32280099/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32280099/ * Immunological role of Beta-Amyloid: https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/trc2.12100 https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.100...

ncmncm 4y ago
And not just flu, HSV and gingivitis. Tdap vaccination is also apparently protective. So, probably too chicken pox vaccination, shingles vaccination, and periodic valacyclovir dosage. Maybe even HPV. You don't need very good reasons to keep up on your vaccinations.

srvmshr 4y ago

At some point we (researchers & scientists) should draw the line between correlation & causation. That there is 40% less incidence in flu vaccinated patients is established by observation, but is it due to flu vaccine by itself or factors which surrounds itself in people more prone to flu or who are medically more conscious? (edit: think of analysis of variance tests among identifiable medical & socioeconomic variables). If the researchers establish a positive link, wouldn't it be worthwhile to then suppose that amyloid plaques are somehow related to viral influenza replication - which by itself sounds a bit absurd (edit: Ok lot of good reference about infections around AD. I take this back, my bad) The alternative hypothesis is worth thinking too: Are people more prone to Alzheimer's also more prone to catching flu.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> wouldn't it be worthwhile to then suppose that amyloid plaques are somehow related to viral influenza replication - which by itself sounds a bit absurd This is a prominent theory for the cause of Alzheimer's disease [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31900354 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31900354
lukev 4y ago
At some point we (commenters on hacker news) should stop reflexively typing this in response to every study without reading the paper. From the abstract: > Propensity-score matching (PSM) was used to create flu-vaccinated and flu-unvaccinated cohorts with similar baseline demographics, medication usage, and comorbidities. If you want to argue that the authors did a bad job at this, for some reason, that would be a really meaningful contribution and I'd love to hear the details. Otherwise, can we assume that the scientists writing and reviewing papers did a semi-competent job and are at least as good at analyzing quantitative claims as someone commenting on HN because they are bored at work?
- srvmshr 4y ago
  I am not an expert at this, though I have taken few credits of Biostatistics. I would be more interested if swapping the variables also gave significance in tests. Did the Alzheimer's cohort also have a higher incidence of flu related comorbidities? I understand this is difficult - but this is why ANOVA tests also are extensively used to show variable dependence or report the degree of dependence. It is unclear from their findings. Without that we are probably looking at some positive correlation without investigating the causation.

standardUser 4y ago

If anyone out there thinks there are still people who don't realize that "correlation does not equal causation", don't worry, we all know.

bink 4y ago
Now you just have to convince them that scientists know how to control for these effects.
- Jensson 4y ago
  Scientists are incentivised to not control for these effects, so often they don't. Especially in papers reaching the news since they are usually "ground breaking" because they abused statistics.

i_love_limes 4y ago

Epidemiologist in training here... There are quite a few comments in this thread already jumping on the 'correlation != causation' train. While that is true, I'd like to clarify a couple things: 1. The journal article didn't suggest it was causal. But such a correlation with such a large population warrants publication and further research into causation. 2. literally the first thing that any epidemiologist would consider is potential confounders. There is a big list of covariates they included into their model here: https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad220361#jad--1-jad220361-t002 https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-... There are quite a few things that can be done to alleviate potential false correlations: DAGs, prior literature, removing confounders, and including covariates are all things at disposal. 3. Such a large sample size + previously reported findings + an inclusion of enough covariates still doesn't == causation, BUT it's important to publish and shout about so we can then look into the potential biological underpinnings that may cause this. Which by the way, those experiments may still use data science techniques. 4. If you are actually interested, there is a whole topic of this called 'causal inference' with one famous criteria list called the 'Bradford Hill Criteria': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_Hill_criteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_Hill_criteria. This list is often argued about. 5. If all of this information was new to you, please stop spouting 'correlation != causation'. You probably don't know as much as you think

itsoktocry 4y ago
>There are quite a few comments in this thread already jumping on the 'correlation != causation' train. Complaining about correlation not being causation is the perfect theme for the midwit meme. It's one of my pet peeves.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- planarhobbit 4y ago
  I’d say they should show evidence that they know what they’re talking about, but then I’d be accused of credentialism.

seydor 4y ago

A lot of armchair scientists in the comments. It's quite striking effect but why is it published on IOS press? Looks like there might be more worth exploring in that dataset. What are the ways in which their result could be an artifact?

calebm 4y ago

bilsbie 4y ago

I posted this exact link two days ago. What gives?

kelnos 4y ago
I wouldn't think anything nefarious happened. A few possibilities: * You posted it during a time of day when the site receives less traffic, and it scrolled too far down or off the New page for people to see it and vote it up. (Looks like you posted during lunch time on the US west coast, so maybe this isn't likely.) * When you posted, there was other big news or something going on that people were absorbed in, and didn't notice your post. * Some don't visit HN multiple times a day, and perhaps you just got unlucky that many of the people who would have found this interesting didn't see it 2 days ago, but did happen to be around today. * Your account was created three days ago, and I wouldn't be surprised if HN doesn't weight upvotes on new-account submissions as highly as for older accounts. Also consider that your first submission (the day before) was flagged and killed; that might put you in a time-limited penalty box. (I don't know any of this for a fact, as I have no idea how HN's software works, but it seems plausible.) * Just dumb luck. I've made a bunch of submissions that I thought were interesting (and though would appeal to a wide variety of HN readers/commenters), but it just turned out that it wasn't the case. Maybe it was just timing or something else. I believe the mods have stated that HN allows duplicate links within a shorter-than-normal time period if the previous posting didn't get much attention, so it's perhaps not surprising that the software allowed the repost.
- Izkata 4y ago
  > * You posted it during a time of day when the site receives less traffic, and it scrolled too far down or off the New page for people to see it and vote it up. (Looks like you posted during lunch time on the US west coast, so maybe this isn't likely.) Looks like it's UTC, so early Saturday morning vs after lunch Monday. > * When you posted, there was other big news or something going on that people were absorbed in, and didn't notice your post. Roe v Wade
dang 4y ago
There's a lot of randomness in what gets attention on /newest. Your submission didn't get attention while this one did. HN disallows reposts within 8 hours or if a story has had significant attention in the last year, but neither of those were the case with this repost, so our software allowed it to go through. I know it's frustrating when your submission 'loses' and someone else's 'wins', but since it's random, it at least evens out in the long run if you submit lots of good stories. Eventually we'll implement some sort of karma sharing to take care of this.

gojomo 4y ago

The words "linked to" or "associated with" are tells that no real causality has been established – no matter how casually, or sloppily, causality is implied by the paper or breezy PR summaries. Maybe, early pre-diagnosis aspects of eventual Alzheimer's (such as undiagnosed mild cognitive impairments) makes people less interested in, and diligent in pursuing, flu vaccinations. (In other words: the causality goes the other way.) But also, people with active family/social lives are both more likely to be reminded to get a flu vaccine, and less likely to develop Alzheimer's. And further: more conscientious people seek out vaccines. More conscientious people get Alzheimer's at a much lower rate. For example, this study - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/210072 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/... – suggests those in the 90th percentile of conscientiousness have 89% lower rates of Alzheimer's diagnoses than those in the 10th percentile of conscientiousness. While a mechanism from vax-induced immunity, and/or fewer actual infections, to less dementia is plausible, these other well-known correlates/confounders seem a likely explanation for these results, until/unless controlled-for.

lancebeet 4y ago

It's quite remarkable that an effect of this size on such a large group seems to have gone undetected for such a long time. As a layman, I would almost have expected geriatricians to have made the observation during their own practice.

MuchoMaas 4y ago
Also quite remarkable that the flu vaccine seems to have a larger impact on the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease than it does on, well, influenza.
ncmncm 4y ago
The same 40% effect size was seen for Tdap vaccination. Although, Tdap and flu vaccination are pretty strongly correlated. It was noticed, thus prompting these studies.

jeffreportmill1 4y ago

Possible alternate title: "People with early onset Alzheimer's frequently forget to get flu shots".

ac29 4y ago
Given that >90% of non-vaccinated patients did not get a Alzheimer's diagnosis, this seems wrong.
- Jensson 4y ago
  Why? You got many people who don't want to get a flu shot for other reasons. But if lets say Alzheimer's makes the people who normally gets it forget to go, then that would greatly skew how many with very early Alzheimer's gets flu shot, making it look like flu shots "protects" against Alzheimer's. And no, checking whether they had it beforehand doesn't help, it starts to develop many years before its symptoms are so strong that you identify them as Alzheimer's, forgetting rare and optional appointments certainly wouldn't be enough to say it is Alzheimer's yet. That is why scoring well on an IQ test also "protects against Alzheimer", it isn't that the IQ test protects you, it is that the IQ test can detect effects of Alzheimer's before a diagnosis can see it.

lukev 4y ago

Lots of discussion in this thread about the accuracy of the implied claim "vaccination can prevent Alzheimers", but not a lot about the correct course of action. Which seems to me to be, unambiguously, you should absolutely be religious about getting your flu shot every year. The vaccine is known to be safe and with few side effects (or at least, safer than the actual flu, which is the bar that needs to be cleared.) And even if it hasn't been conclusively proven that vaccines can avert Alzheimer's, you're at least putting yourself in the best possible cohort, right? Anyone familiar with Bayes' Theorem should be absolutely on board with this.

runevault 4y ago
I will say, as someone with an egg allergy it isn't so black and white. Not everywhere carries alternative ways of getting flu vaccine, though hopefully post Covid mRNA versions will become more prevalent (assuming that version has the same impact, haven't read the article).
- amluto 4y ago
  There are apparently two egg-free options: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/egg-allergies.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/egg-allergies.htm
  - runevault 4y ago
    Yes there are versions that are not egg based, but last I remember they were not guaranteed to be available at a given location (I haven't gotten the flu shot in years because it was tedious). Which is why I'm hoping as mRNA as a mechanism grows more common non-egg based shots will as well. I remember when I was getting the covid shot being paranoid and triple checking that it in no way shape form or fashion used egg.
    - amluto 4y ago
      Is mRNA really better? My impression (not based on high quality data) is that the mRNA COVID vaccines are rather more unpleasant to receive than a flu shot. Of course, there is a distinct lack of other mRNA vaccines for comparison.

headsoup 4y ago

The study doesn't seem to call out how many numbers in each cohort actually got the flu in the time period. Also, that the vaccines are created anew each year for the particular strains of flu likely to be an issue also requires investigation.

DarkmSparks 4y ago

While this would be lovely, I think it just proves people with dementia are less likely to remember to get a flu vaccine.

Jedd 4y ago
> I think it just proves people with dementia are less likely to remember to get a flu vaccine. I think you may have misread the fine article. Symptoms were observed to develop (or not develop) after a flu vaccination shot.
- Jensson 4y ago
  Dementia is preceded by many years of cognitive decline, it isn't something that just appears. A person with partially developed dementia that wouldn't get detected in a screen is still probably less likely to go get a flu shot, wouldn't you think?
  - DarkmSparks 4y ago
    exactly this, because there is no treatment diagnosis is delayed as long as possible to avoid the stigma, by the time people get a diagnosis they are generally at the point they forget when to feed themselves. Prior to that the decline can be decades in the making. My gran obviously had dementia for 15 years before her diagnosis, by the time she was given it the only words she could say was "keep on keeping on"
    - Jedd 4y ago
      Refer my response to parent. Specifically to your most recent point, however, I'd observe that if treatment diagnosis is delayed as long as possible to avoid the stigma, that would put back treatment diagnosis for both groups, so it's hardly a compelling distinction there. Anyway, I'd expect people with dementia at the time of their flu shot would have been assessed by the caregiver, and they would probably have been taken to the clinic by a family or friend anyway. The compelling anecdote of your gran notwithstanding, of course.

RagnarD 4y ago

The connection between Alzheimers and viral disease has been known and studied for some time, particularly but not exclusively for Herpes Simplex 1. The dead end pursuit of amyloid plaques as causative has delayed other research for decades. (In fact one hypothesis is that the plaques are a natural antiviral defense mechanism in the brain to try to slow down viral infection.) It's time to take a much closer look at viral disease, possibly including influenza, as a fundamental cause. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26967229/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26967229/

tick_tock_tick 4y ago

I think we're slowly going to figure out that our own immune system does a bit more damage to the host then we though.

42e6e8c8-f7b8-4 4y ago

Does this study account for "healthy user bias"?

ncmncm 4y ago

Back in April 2021, another study using >100,000 US Veterans Administration patients over 6 years found the same effect and effect size (42%) for Tdap vaccination. They then checked a completely disjoint population, in a different health-care system, and got the same number. I went out and got an over-the-counter Tdap vaccination at a local pharmacy, because how good does your reason for a vaccine booster need to be?

pengaru 4y ago

"Caring enough about stuff like your health to get flu vaccines linked to better outcomes"

Markoff 4y ago

At least one of the researchers (Paul E. Schulz) disqualifies this study, his disclosure: "Consulting Fees: Occasional advisory panels for Lilly, Acadia, and Biogen. Lecture Fees: Occasional disease state education talks for Lilly, Acadia, and Biogen. Patents/Royalties I serve as an expert witness for medical malpractice cases and other types of cases. None related to this paper. Not sure where to put this, but i am on about 12 NIH grants, none related to this study. And i have about 12 treatment trials funded by many pharmaceutical companies, including Lilly, Acadia, Biogen, Roche, UCB, etc. None are related to this paper, in my opinion." And that's just one, who is even admitting anything, the others can be funded through various shell companies which looks at first unrelated to pharma and claim they have nothing to disclose. You won't bite hand that's feeeding you. I take any research pushing vaccination (especially something like flu vaccines which are pretty much placebo with 10-60% efficacy if you are lucky [1] [2], if not 0%) with big grain of salt nowadays after our experiences with these "safe and effective" COVID vaccines, which were proven to be not so safe and hardly effective at all. [1] https://www.science.org/content/article/why-flu-vaccines-so-often-fail https://www.science.org/content/article/why-flu-vaccines-so-... [2] https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/seasonal-influenza/prevention-and-control/vaccine-effectiveness https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/seasonal-influenza/prevention-...