New research shows the shingles vaccine may prevent the progression of dementia!!

A simple vaccine may not only be protective against developing dementia but may also slow down its progression, especially among women. There's a lot going on here, so please Imk what questions you have and I can make more videos. Here's a summary: The April paper in Nature looked at data from ~280,000 patients in Wales and found those who had not quite turned 80 when the shingles vaccine became available were 3.5 percentage points less likely to develop dementia than those who had just turned 80. The researchers looked at these two groups very carefully to see if there were any other differences between them (aside from being born a few weeks apart), and they did not identify any major differences. They also looked at some data from England to assess risk of death due to dementia, and they estimate 1 in 20 deaths were averted due to the shingles vaccine. They also published a study in JAMA this year looking at data from Australia with overall similar findings. They did not identify a difference by gender, and the magnitude of the overall effect was smaller (1.8 percentage points), but they also were working with a more limited dataset. The study out this week also looked at ~280,000 patients in Wales, and this time they looked at diagnoses of mild cognitive impairment and death from dementia. They found a 1.5 percentage point decrease in the development of mild cognitive impairment (3.1 pp among those who were actually vaccinated), 8.5 pp decrease in death due to dementia (29.5 pp among those actually vaccinated), and 6.5 pp decrease in all-cause mortality (22.7 pp among those actually vaccinated). These data suggest healthy people who were vaccinated were less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment, and those with dementia who were vaccinated were less likely to die. Lots of questions remain, but if a simple vaccination can decrease rates of dementia and delay death, that's pretty amazing! Do we think RFK Jr, who is supposedly so concerned about chronic conditions, will jump on this? #science #health #publichealth #dementia #shingles #chickenpox