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The shingles vaccine may reduce the risk of dementia
https://archive.ph/PzPop https://archive.ph/PzPop
- mecdu92 3mo ago[flagged]
- robot_jesus 3mo agohttps://archive.ph/PzPop https://archive.ph/PzPop
- satya71 3mo agoTL;DR Shingles vaccines reduces chances of dementia by 20%. Yet, most countries health systems only look at the upfront cost of ~$300 and don’t recommend for all who could benefit.
- MASNeo 3mo agoIn a separate article the other factors are quoted with similar impact (listed in order of max potential magnitude) - anti depression treatment - education increases - hearing improvement - obesity reduction - low alcohol The earlier you start the better.
- gruez 3mo ago>anti depression treatment - regular exercise - obesity reduction - education - less/no alcohol Injecting people with a shingles vaccine is far easier than the others you listed, which is why it stands out.
- WalterGR 3mo ago> hearing improvement This means addressing hearing loss, e.g. via hearing aids.
- rsyring 3mo agoCan you share the article you reference?
- MASNeo 3mo agoIts paywalled though: https://economist.com/briefing/2026/07/09/how-dementia-is-being-defeated https://economist.com/briefing/2026/07/09/how-dementia-is-be...
- SoftTalker 3mo ago20% of what?
- hatsunearu 3mo agoShould I get the shingles vaccine at a young age? I've had chickenpox earlier in my life.
- jyounker 3mo agoAs someone who got shingles at about 46, yes.
- tptacek 3mo agoThat may be the case in other countries, but in the US we're generally fee-for-service, so the incentives are reversed, and we still don't give it until you're 50 (which, as someone who has had it and is under 50, annoys me to no end).
- ferongr 3mo agoDementia largely affects people on a pension, and not working adults contributing to the pyramid scheme.
- xelaboi 3mo agoThis would be a good conspiracy theory if dementia was a short illness.
- robot_jesus 3mo agoI'm in my 40s with genetic predisposition for Alzheimer's. Been seriously considering the past year or two paying out of pocket for Shingrix. I think it would be ~$500 total for two doses. Sure, I could wait 7 or 8 years until I qualify via insurance, but is that really worth the risk for what is an easily absorbed cost to me? Especially when I have a friend in her late 30s who just went through a very rough bout of shingles? It makes sense to have targets like age 50 for population-wide public health recommendations. But it can and does infect people of much earlier ages. Recent articles like this make me think I'll go ahead.
- cyanydeez 3mo agoaside from age ranges being the tested population, your just gambling no other interference pattern is involved.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- copperx 3mo agoShingles terrifies me because it can cause hearing loss. I spoke to my GP and he wouldn't give me a script for it even though I'm 3 years away from qualifying. He mentioned side effects.
- jyounker 3mo agoThat seems like being penny wise and pound foolish.
- tptacek 3mo agoI think the bigger thing is that the vaccine has a peak response window, and the current medical guidance lines that up with when you're epidemiologically most likely to experience a shingles outbreak (for most people, that's very unlikely when you're young, because your immune system is so jumpy, but that wanes with age). If you get the vaccine early, its effect can be attenuated right when you need it most. (I don't like this logic and if I had the option of just going to Walgreens and getting vaccinated, I'd do that this afternoon. I'm just saying, there's a logic to it.)
- hereme888 3mo agoReplicated association, which is strong, but not proof. Initial study saw a 3.5% absolute reduction in dementia diagnoses over seven years with a very wide confidence interval. In Australia the study was replicated with 1.8% absolute reduction over 7.4 yrs. Canadian replication: 2% over 5.5 yrs. Infections generally increase the risk of future dementia. Like the more colds you have throughout life.
- gruez 3mo ago>Replicated association [...] "association" undersells it a bit, because the data is better than the typical cohort study, which has issues like "what if people who got the vaccine are also richer and care about their health more?". There's quasi-randomization going on. From the more in depth article that's linked: >Research is also revealing unexpected interventions that help to keep ageing minds sharp. One of the most promising derives from an analysis by Pascal Geldsetzer of Stanford University and his team of a natural experiment in Wales. In 2013 the British region started offering people aged 70-79 free vaccinations through the public-health system. This change resembled an RCT, in that a large number of people were separated almost at random into two groups: those who had already turned 80 in the weeks before the programme started, and so were not eligible to be jabbed; and those who turned 80 in the weeks after, roughly half of whom were duly vaccinated.
- alfiedotwtf 3mo ago> like the more colds you have in life Whoa wait what? This is the first time I’ve heard of this - is this actually common knowledge?
- hereme888 3mo agoNot common knowledge, but should be in this day and age. For example, someone who worked in daycare and often got sick with the flu or similar, has a higher risk of dementia (statistically-speaking). When I learned it, it was in the context of the influenza and similar common viruses. It's actually more nuanced than that. If you want to read more: https://www.openevidence.com/ask/bccc3cc2-e15d-4fb0-a0c5-16f17a0d45c2 https://www.openevidence.com/ask/bccc3cc2-e15d-4fb0-a0c5-16f...
- swed420 3mo ago[flagged]
- xyzsparetimexyz 3mo agoLmao
- timcobb 3mo agomost people can't really get a worthwhile quality of life like that. maybe life is worthwhile to you walking around in an N95 respirator, but not to me, at least not... indefinitely. I'd rather be dead TBH. IMO it makes sense to wait to die to be dead. Why be dead while you're still technically alive? What are you trying to optimize for? Days you woke up? And for transparency, I am triple vaccinated (maybe more, I lost count), have had 0 covid infections as far as I know, masked for a long time while it seemed to make sense.
- OutOfHere 3mo ago[flagged]
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- zyralab 3mo ago[flagged]
- syntaxing 3mo agoI know quite a few people who got shingles in their early 20s. One of their doctors didn’t believe she had shingles until the blisters formed. The vaccine can definitely help those younger than 50, dementia benefits or not. Some of them have permanent nerve damage after getting shingles.
- jliptzin 3mo agoMy brother had it when he was 17
- selimthegrim 3mo agoI had it at 14
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- mecdu92 3mo ago[flagged]
- gruez 3mo ago" Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- antaviana 3mo agoSo if you had shingles in your youth then you are better protected against dementia?
- dymk 3mo agoThe article says that one possible reason the vaccine protects against dementia is incidental protection from other diseases. Getting chickenpox as a kid might protect you against shingles, but maybe not against those other diseases.
- tptacek 3mo agoNo! The opposite thing is true. Getting chickenpox as a kid drastically increases your likelihood of getting shingles as an adult. The initial chickenpox infection is the mechanism by which you're set up for shingles: you get it, fight it back, and it remains dormant in your nerves. Shingles is not simply chickenpox; it's the secondary infection you get from a resurgent zoster outbreak based in your nerves. Don't get chickenpox.
- Jolter 3mo agoWell, now… I can tell you second hand that catching chicken pox as an adult is no picnic either.
- NetMageSCW 3mo agoThe original question had nothing to do with getting Chickenpox or Shingles.
- khriss 3mo agoRecently, even the TDAP (Tetanus) vaccine was correlated with lower incidence of dementia https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26919881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26919881 I recall seeing a few discussions on HN comments hypothesizing that immune system stimulation via the vaccine might be the root cause. Now that the Amyloid hypothesis is on the wane, hopefully we'll explore other paths.
- zahlman 3mo ago> the Amyloid hypothesis is on the wane Oh? What did I miss?
- Terr_ 3mo agoI think the short version is that people have developed a lot of things to substantially reduce the levels in human brains, but in practice is doesn't seem to be yielding clearly-good results.
- khriss 3mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32183302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32183302 TL;DR A lot of evidence supporting the Amyloid hypothesis is suspect.
- what_hn 3mo agoIs it also possible they're finding healthier people that are proactive in their treatment, maybe even exercise more, work longer, etc...
- modeless 3mo agoGood guess. The actual mechanism is that people who don't get the vaccination are more likely to need to visit the hospital to treat their shingles, and because they visit the hospital more they have more chances to get a diagnosis of dementia in a hospital. See this presentation: https://youtu.be/qlTnnQytOJ0 https://youtu.be/qlTnnQytOJ0 The lesson is to be extremely suspicious of findings of causation based on observational studies.
- runeks 3mo ago> Good guess. The actual mechanism [...] Why couldn't both these factors contribute to the result of the study?
- WarOnPrivacy 3mo agoPSA: For us uninsured, the shingles vaccine costs ~$500 out of pocket (>$250 x2). I want folks to get it but - I feel "Just Get It" admonitions carry a vibe that the cost is negligible.
- cubefox 3mo ago> Most of the evidence of its anti-dementia effect relates to an earlier version of the vaccine, which used a weakened form of the live virus. It has since been largely replaced by a new one, Shingrix, which contains just a sprinkling of proteins from the virus and is seen as safer because it cannot cause an infection. Unfortunately the apparent anti-dementia effect of this old vaccine (Zostavax) recently turned out to be a statistical illusion: https://youtube.com/watch?v=qlTnnQytOJ0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=qlTnnQytOJ0 It is not clear whether the effect from Shingrix (the new one) is real or not. We currently don't have a case-control study which could prove causation.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3mo agoI had the vaccine, last year (but I’m 64). Hoowee, it made me sick, but only for a day (twice, as you get a booster, six months later). Had chickenpox (and measles, at the same time), when I was a kid. That was fun. My mother used to get recurring bouts of the shingles. Definitely not fun.
- jeffbee 3mo agoYeah I got this last week and I felt like I got hit by a bus 12 hours later. The pharmacist claimed the second dose is worse. But getting the disease is no picnic at all. I had it in my 20s and it was like someone kept stabbing me in the eye, all day long for a week.
- jonatron 3mo agoI got shingles after the covid vaccine, which is a rare but statistically highly significant risk: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35470920/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35470920/ . Both covid and shingles sucked, luckily it was years ago now.
- modeless 3mo agoUnfortunately this is a spurious finding. See this presentation: https://youtu.be/qlTnnQytOJ0 https://youtu.be/qlTnnQytOJ0 The mechanism is that people with the shingles vaccine are less likely to visit the hospital (because they don't get shingles). Because they have fewer hospital visits they are less likely to receive an incidental diagnosis of dementia from a hospital.
- teravor 3mo agoare there that many instances of mild dementia where a lack of diagnosis remains a lack?
- asdff 3mo agoWell it does tend to happen late in life where other health issues could take you out before the dementia gets noticeable beyond usual senility.
- dlcarrier 3mo agoThere's also this whole thing: https://xkcd.com/882/ https://xkcd.com/882/ There's countless treatments and countless diseases. It is very much worth combing data to find treatments with potential off-label uses, but with that many combinations of treatments and diseases, much more care needs to go into eliminating not just non-causative correlations, but straight-up random correlations that have a very small probability of happening on their own, but are likely to happen in a large enough group of comparisons.
- cubefox 3mo agoYes, though the above only addresses studies based on Zostavax. Shingrix might still offer some protection from dementia.
- mullingitover 3mo ago> Another is that the vaccination gives the immune system a firm kick up its B-cells, activating it against other bugs that might contribute to dementia. It's weird that they kinda gloss over the very real and open questions here, because the idea that the AS01 adjuvant is involved in the dementia protection is very much alive and an ongoing topic. A paper from last year[1] looked into it and found that the Shingrix shingles vaccine and the RSV vaccine are about the same in their risk reduction for dementia (with a bunch of caveats). I believe the current evidence point to the shingles vaccine helping, but also a protective effect happening from the AS01 adjuvant on its own. I'm not a researcher but my layman's take is that the Economist whiffed it here, and there's a more interesting and complicated story to be told beyond this clickbait-adjacent science journalism. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12198376/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12198376/
- erelong 3mo ago...and there may be damaging side effects while there are probably lots of accessible "natural" demetia remedies that you can do without having to resort to experimental drugs that may cause more problems and cost more
- kurthr 3mo agoBut what if those unstudied accessible "natural" remedies have even more problems? Should we choose to do nothing, only study nothing, or just redefine what "natural" is?
- NetMageSCW 3mo agoWhat is experimental about the Shingrix vaccine?
- panny 3mo agoHORSE PASTE!!! NO!!! NO MEDICINE HAS TWO USES!!! HORSE PASTE!!! Did I do it right? https://c19early.org/i https://c19early.org/i Edit: I just learned all the dementia patients have undiagnosed shingles. Please ignore my comment now. :-|
- jeffbee 3mo agoI mean, you conformed to the norms and customs of horsepaste quackery, and in that sense you "did it right". However, the science here is a little off-point. Ivermectin had observable benefits in some localities during the pandemic. In all likelihood, everyone who walks into a hospital for any reason in those countries should be given Ivermectin, because they all have undiagnosed parasites.
- tsoukase 3mo agoDementia might have dozens of risk factors, each adding up a little. Physical and emotional stress, insomnia, head microinjuries, arteriovascular risk factors, infections and there lies herpes zoster. Only the latter has a causal treatment and is only single stone on the wall of disease.
- Simpledempkin 3mo ago[flagged]
- pstuart 3mo agoI got shingles in my early 50s and did not know there were antivirals that could help mitigate its effects. I now have postherpetic neuralgia and the pain is not quite enough to off myself but the fact that I have to live with this for the rest of my life weighs me down. It turns out that "pain management" is more art than science and almost all the pharma options out there come with significant risks and concerns. I ended up turning to kratom to manage the pain, which it does, but it's come at significant cost as well (addiction being one of them). I'm now going to try peptides (ARA-290 and BPC-157) to see if maybe that can help but it's all a crap shoot. I share this as a warning/advice: get the vaccine if you can, even if insurance resists, push back. It may be worth it out of pocket IMHO. If you can't, remember to get access to antivirals immediately if you can.
- jeffbee 3mo agoThe antiviral treatments for shingles are not very practical in that by the time you decide to visit the doctor it may already be too late for them to work.
- pstuart 3mo agoThis may be the case, I haven't researched it deeply enough because it was already a day late and a dollar short. I just asked The Goog and it said the answer is effectively "possibly, but nuanced". So you may be right but not completely ;-). I'd still suggest doing it as its likely to have a positive risk/reward ratio. But better still is to get the vaccine.
- Scoundreller 3mo agoThat’s why pharmacies are allowed to give them out directly here for shingles (Ontario Canada and possibly other provinces)
- pengaru 3mo agowill we ever be free from the curse of believing correlation == causation
- gdudeman 3mo agoIf you haven't seen the chart from the UK study, I highly recommend checking it out: https://erictopol.substack.com/p/the-shingles-vaccine-and-reduction https://erictopol.substack.com/p/the-shingles-vaccine-and-re... When the vaccine came out in the UK, they included a hard age cutoff: Above a certain age, you weren't eligible. Below that age, you were eligible. They looked at the probability of a dementia diagnosis over the 7 years after the vaccine was introduced. People who were born in the "can get the vaccine" group have markedly lower rates of dementia. People in the "too old" group have higher rates. It's cut and dry. The researchers didn't separate out the people who actually got the vaccine. It's one of those studies where you don't even need to look at the p-value to see the difference between the cohorts.
- leereeves 3mo agoI think I'm failing to understand your subtext. Obviously older people have higher rates of dementia. A study reporting that doesn't tell us anything about the effect of the vaccine.
- gdudeman 3mo agoSorry - the older group has higher rates of dementia than the younger group when they reach the same age - so when they reach 75, they're more likely to have dementia.
- leereeves 3mo agoI see what you mean, there's a clear gap in the fitted (regression) lines, suggesting the trend of dementia with age is different in the two groups. But I wonder if that's just a statistical artifact. The overall trend looks the same in both groups if you ignore a couple points (ages) on either side of introducing the vaccine. A single line appears to fit all the points well, except two points on either side of the divide.
- yayachiken 3mo agoThe normalization of the age variable still looks problematic, as it requires that there is a linear dependency between age and incidence. Both the scatter plot and also the probability graph seem to be curving upwards w.r.t age, i.e. the incidence of dementia cases seems to accelerate with age. Which at least makes a lot of intuitive sense, and would forbid just plotting in a regression line. Having a more or less circumstantial point to arbitrarily cut your regression line in half also just begs for introducing Simpson's Paradox.
- browski 3mo agoNever marrying may reduce risk of dementia: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-single/202504/dementia-is-more-common-among-the-married-than-the-unmarried https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-single/202504...
- selimthegrim 3mo agoI actually contracted shingles as a teenager (at the same time as mono - fun times) should I still take the vaccine?
- stuaxo 3mo agoWasn't this done with the previous shingles vacccine, not the current one ? If so this would need to be retested to be validated.
- anotherevan 3mo agoWatching my mum's descent into dementia, if (when?) I ever go down the same route, I plan to have, "You have dementia, be calm," tattooed on one arm, and pictures of my loved ones tattooed on the other.
- ivankra 3mo agoNot only shingles vaccine: https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/eight-vaccines-linked-lower-risk-dementia https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/eight-vaccines-linked-lowe...
- cubefox 3mo agoSome of these correlations could be merely due to the "healthy vaccinee effect": https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/healthy-vaccinee-effect https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/healthy-vaccinee-e...
- londons_explore 3mo agoThis would seem to be a good reason to attempt to create an 'all disease' vaccine. You would go round the nation taking samples from every sick person you could find, then inactivate them with radiation, then inject it as a vaccine.
- realxrobau 3mo agoIt appears my wife (Australian, 49) may be suffering from shingles. So this was an apt time for this article to appear. She's seen her Dr and swabs are being processed. She's on antivirals and painkillers and has a nasty fever. Now I am horrified about how awful it can be, after reading all the comments in here.