Shingles Vaccine That Could Slow Dementia? Study Finds

A new study suggests there may be new hope in the fight against dementia, finding that a new vaccine against shingles appears to delay the onset of the disease, which impairs a person’s ability to carry out daily tasks independently.

A study published last week in natural medicine, compared about 100,000 people who received the shingles vaccine with a similar group who received an earlier version.

The researchers found that, on average, those who received the new vaccine had an extra 164 days without a dementia diagnosis over six years. But they also said they needed more work to prove the link.

Shingles is a serious and painful condition, more common in older people, caused by the reactivation of the herpes zoster virus, which causes chickenpox. A vaccine was developed to combat it 18 years ago. Since then, more and more research has been conducted, suggesting that the vaccine may help protect against dementia, if definitive results are reached.

In a new study, researchers at the University of Oxford compared the health records of people in the United States who received the older Zostavax vaccine with those of people who received the new vaccine, sold as Shingrix.

In both cases, the same number of people ended up with dementia. But the study found that, on average, people taking Shingrix lived 17% longer without a dementia diagnosis than those in the other group.

The study also found that the benefit of the vaccine against dementia was greater in women. The study did not determine how the Shingrix vaccine delayed the onset of dementia, whether it directly reduced the risk of dementia, or whether another factor was at play.

There are also factors that doctors associate with an increased risk of dementia, including high blood pressure, smoking and excessive alcohol consumption. Such factors may have influenced the outcome of the investigation.

Professor Paul Harrison, from Oxford University’s department of psychiatry, told the BBC the study raised a number of questions that urgently needed to be addressed. “One possibility is that herpes viruses could be one of many factors that could contribute to the development of dementia,” he said. A vaccine that prevents the virus from reactivating could therefore delay any process that leads to dementia, he added.

“Another possibility is that vaccine ingredients designed to help the body mount a protective response may play a more important role,” he said. According to the study, “these results should encourage further research into the mechanisms underlying protection and may facilitate the design of a large-scale randomized control trial to confirm the potential additional benefit of the shingles vaccine.”

Shingrix is ​​manufactured by the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), which took part in the study.