Shingles Vaccine Can Decrease Risk of Dementia, Study Finds

Being vaccinated against Herpes Zoster can reduce the risk of developing dementia, A new great study Discoveries.

The results provide some of the strongest tests, however that some viral infections can have effects on brain function years later and that preventing them can help to avoid cognitive decline.

The study, published on Wednesday in the magazine Nature, discovered that the people who received the vaccine against Herpes Zoster had 20 % less likely to develop dementia in the following seven years compared to those who were not vaccinated.

“If you are reducing the risk of dementia of 20 percent, it is quite important in a context of public health, given that at the moment we have much more that slows down the onset of dementia,” said dr. Paul Harrison, professor of psychiatry in Oxford. Dr. Harrison was not involved in the new study, but did Other searches Indicating that the minor zoster vaccines the risk of dementia.

If the protection can last over seven years it can only be determined with further research. But with few treatments or currently effective preventions, said dr. Harrison, fire vaccines seem to have “some of the strongest potential protective effects against dementia that we know that they are potentially usable in practice”.

Cases of tiles derive from the virus that causes infantile chickenpox, chickenpox-zoster, which generally remains dormant in nerve cells for decades. As people age and their immune system weaken, the virus can reactivate and cause tiles, with symptoms such as burning, tingling, painful blisters and numbness. Nervous pain can become chronic and disabilities.

In the United States, about One in three people Develop at least one case of tiles, also called Herpes Zoster, in their life, the centers for the control of diseases and prevention estimates. About a third of suitable adults has received the vaccine in recent years, According to the Center for the Prevention and Control of Diseases

Numerous previous studies have suggested that the vaccinations of Herpes Zoster could reduce the risk of dementia, but most could not exclude the possibility that people who are vaccinated could have other protective characteristics of dementia, such as healthier lifestyles, better diets or more years of education.

The new study has excluded many of these factors.

“It’s a rather strong test,” said Dr. Aupam Jena, economist and health doctor of the Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the study but saw him again for nature.

The study emerged from an unusual aspect of a launch of vaccines against Herpes Zoster in Wales on September 1, 2013. Welsh officials established a rigorous age requirement: the people who were 79 years old on that date were suitable for the vaccine for a year, but those and more than 80 and the more they were inadmissible. When young people turned 79, they became suitable for the vaccine for a year.

The cut of age – imposed due to a limited supply and because the vaccine was therefore considered less effective for people over the age of 80 – created a “natural experiment”, said dr. Pascal Geldsetzer, assistant professor of medicine in Stanford and the senior author of the study.

It allowed scientists to compare relatively equal groups: people eligible for vaccine with slightly older people who could not get it. “If I take 1,000 people born a week and 1,000 people born a week later, there should be no difference between them, with the exception of the big difference in the absorption of vaccination,” said dr. Geldsetzer.

The researchers monitored medical records of around 280,000 people aged between 71 and 88 and without dementia at the beginning of the launch. In seven years, almost half of those suitable for the vaccine received it, while only a small number of the unification group was vaccinated, providing a clear distinction before and after.

To limit the probability of differences between the groups, the researchers used statistical analysis to weigh people’s data more heavily only one week on both sides of the cut: those who turned 80 in the week before launching and those who turned 80 in the following week.

They also examined medical records for possible differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated. They evaluated if people not vaccinated received more diagnosis of dementia simply because they visited the doctors more frequently and if they took more drugs that could increase the risk of dementia.

“They do an excellent job in this,” said Dr. Jena, who wrote a comment on the study for nature. “They look at almost 200 drugs that have shown that they are at least associated with the high Alzheimer’s risk.”

He said: “You make many efforts to understand if there could be other things that are timed with that cut of age or not, any other medical policy changes and does not seem to be like this”.

The study involved an older form of vaccine against Herpes Zostavax, which contains a modified version of the live virus. Since then it has been suspended in the United States and in some other countries because its protection against herpes zoscona over time. The new vaccine, Shingrix, which contains an inactivated portion of the virus, is more effective and lasting, shows the research.

A study of last year Dr. Harrison and colleagues have suggested that Shingrix could be more protective against dementia than the older vaccine. Based on another “natural experiment”, the 2017 round in the United States from Zostavax to Shingrix, discovered that over six years, the people who had received the new vaccine had less diagnosis of dementia than those who had the old one. Of the people with diagnosis of dementia, those who received the new vaccine had almost six months more before developing the condition compared to the people who received the old vaccine.

There are several theories as to why tile fire vaccines could protect from dementia. One possibility is that, preventing herpes zoster, vaccines reduce neurOinflammation caused by the reactivation of the virus, said dr. Geldsetzer. “Inflammation is a bad thing for many chronic diseases, including dementia,” he said, therefore “reducing these reactivations and accompanying inflammation can have benefits for dementia”.

Both the new study and the SHINGRIX studio provide support to that theory.

Another possibility is that vaccines increase the immune system in a wider way. The new study offers some tests also for that theory. He discovered that women, who have more reactive immune systems and larger antibody responses to vaccination than men, have experienced greater protection against dementia than men, said dr. Geldetzer. The vaccine also had a greater protective effect against dementia between people with autoimmune conditions and allergies.

Dr. Maria Nagel, professor of neurology at the School of Medicine of the University of Colorado, who was not involved in the study, said that both theories could be true. “There are evidence for a direct effect and an indirect effect,” said dr. Nagel, who consulted the manufacturer of Shingrix, GSK.

He said that some studies have discovered that other vaccines, including those against influenza, create a generalized neuroprotective effect, but that, since the Herpes Zoster virus hides in the nerves, it makes sense that a vaccine against Herpes Zoster would be particularly protective against cognitive impairment.

The study has not distinguished between types of dementia, but other research suggests that “the effect of the vaccine against the Herpes Zoster for Alzheimer’s disease is much more pronounced than another dementia,” said Svetlana Ukraintseva, biologist of Duke Who Coauthoredocr a recent study on Alzheimer and other dementias and vaccines. He said it could be due to the fact that some cases of Alzheimer’s are associated with compromised immunity.

The Welsh population in the study was mostly white, said dr. Geldetzer, but the report also suggested similar protective effects by analyzing death certificates in England due to deaths caused by dementia. His team also replied the results in Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

Dr. Jena said that the connection should be further studied and observed that the reduction of the risk of dementia is not the same as the prevention of all cases. However, he said, the evidence suggests that “something on exposure or access to the vaccine has this effect on the risk of dementia years later”.