Receipt of zoster vaccine reduces probability of new dementia diagnosis over seven-year period by 3.5 percentage points
By Elana Gotkine HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, April 3, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Zoster vaccination seems to have a dementia-preventing or dementia-delaying effect, according to a study published online April 2 in Nature.
Markus Eyting, Ph.D., from Stanford University in California, and colleagues examined the effect of live-attenuated herpes zoster vaccination on the occurrence of dementia diagnosis. Causal evidence was provided using data from Wales, where eligibility for the zoster vaccine was determined based on an individual’s exact date of birth, with those born before Sept. 2, 1933, being ineligible for life and those born on or after Sept. 2, 1933, being eligible for at least one year to receive the vaccine.
The researchers observed an increase in the percentage of adults who received the vaccine, from 0.01 percent among those who were one week too old to receive the vaccine to 47.2 percent among those who were one week younger. Receipt of zoster vaccine reduced the probability of a new dementia diagnosis during a seven-year follow-up period by 3.5 percentage points, corresponding to a relative reduction of 20.0 percent. A stronger protective effect was seen for women than men. The findings were confirmed in England and Wales’s combined population using death certificates, with dementia as the primary cause of death as the outcome.
“By taking advantage of the fact that the unique way in which the zoster vaccine was rolled out in Wales constitutes a natural experiment, and examining each possible remaining source of bias, our study provides evidence that is more likely to be causal in nature than the existing, exclusively associational, evidence on this topic,” the authors write.
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