Can The Shingles Vaccine Help Prevent Dementia?

Описание: The effect of shingles vaccination at different stages of the dementia disease course

PMID: 41338191

Neuroinflammation is a key pathological factor in the development of dementia. Herpesviruses remain latent in the nervous system for life after primary infection and can reactivate with age, leading to neuroinflammation. Thus, clinical and subclinical activation of herpesviruses may drive inflammation in the central and peripheral nervous system. Varicella zoster has recently been linked to amyloid deposition, aggregation of tau proteins, and demetrial cerebrovascular changes, which are pathological findings in Alzheimer's dementia. A previous quasi-randomized study estimated that zoster vaccination prevented 1 in 5 new dementia cases over a 7-year period. This follow-up study examined the effect of zoster vaccination on new diagnoses of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and deaths due to dementia among individuals with dementia in a quasi-randomized manner using date-of-birth eligibility as a threshold.

In their model, a 3.1% reduction in new MCI diagnoses over 9 years was observed among those who received zoster vaccination. In those with dementia, a 29.5% reduction in dementia deaths occurred over 9 years in those who received zoster vaccination. In subgroup analyses, the protective effects were stronger in women than in men (unfortunately, the differences in protection conferred by vaccination were not statistically significant in men). It wasn't statistically significant, but the data pointed towards a stronger effect in those with more severe dementia.

Limitations - Retrospective dataset from health records, quasi-randomized, lots of mathematical modeling, large confidence intervals for results, may not apply to populations younger than the study population

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