The shingles vaccine may significantly help protect older adults against dementia, a growing body of evidence shows.Limited time: Save 25% on NBC News subscriptionGet exclusive reporting, live Q&As and ad-free reading.Exactly how is unclear.The nervous system, however, likely holds clues.Shingles, a condition triggered by the reactivation of the varicella-zoster virus in the body, can cause a “war zone” of inflammation in the brain, said Dr.
Jennifer Pauldurai, the medical director of the Inova Brain Health and Memory Disorders Program in northern Virginia.People who have had chickenpox are at risk of developing the burning, itchy rash years or decades later.Long-term, debilitating nerve pain, called postherpetic neuralgia, is the most common complication of shingles because the varicella-zoster virus hides in the peripheral nervous system.It’s not that the shingles vaccine itself is a “magic pill,” Pauldurai said.
Rather, the vaccine guards against the disease, which is known to disrupt brain health.“When the brain is stressed or challenged with any kind of illness, underlying risks for dementia become more apparent,” Pauldurai said.“We are more likely to get dementia when our brain is not as healthy as it could be, had we not gotten sick from shingles.”A study published June 16 in the Annals of Internal Medicine indicates 1 in 17 dementia cases could possibly be prevented by shingles vaccination.
Patients in nursing facilities who had received at least one dose of the shingles vaccine within a year of admission had a 5.8% lower risk of developing dementia over the next four years, according to health records of more than 509,000 people, ages 66 and older, who had been admitted to U.S.nursing facilities from 2017 through 2022.“That’s huge,” said Kaley Hayes, the lead study author and associate director of pharmacoepidemiology in the Center for Gerontology and Healthcare Research at the Brown University School of Public Health, who wa...