Study Suggests Shingles Vaccine May Lower Dementia Risk

April 4, 2025 TruthUSA

About one in three Americans is expected to develop shingles, according to CDC data.

Recent research indicates that the shingles vaccine, often administered to older adults, may be linked to a reduced risk of developing dementia in later years.

Published in the Nature journal on Wednesday, the findings revealed that older adults who received the zoster vaccine, commonly known as the shingles vaccine, had a 20 percent lower likelihood of developing dementia over the subsequent seven years than those who did not get vaccinated.

Shingles is a viral infection characterized by a painful, itchy rash, usually appearing on one side of the body. Health officials note that it primarily affects individuals aged 50 and older, with those aged 60 and above experiencing more severe symptoms.

Researchers from Stanford University and Vienna University analyzed the health records of 280,000 older adults aged 71 to 88 in Wales who did not have dementia at the beginning of the study.

The data collection followed a mandate in Wales that allowed individuals aged 79 and older on September 1, 2013, to receive the vaccine within the following year, while those aged 80 and above were excluded. Over the next seven years, approximately half of the eligible individuals received the vaccine, and some ineligible individuals also obtained it, according to the study’s authors.

“Utilizing extensive electronic health record data, we compared adults who were ineligible for the vaccine because they were born just before the eligibility cutoff with those born just after who were eligible,” the authors described, labeling this scenario a “natural experiment.”

“Crucially, individuals who are merely weeks apart in age should not exhibit systematic differences,” they stated.

By 2020, seven years after the vaccination mandate was implemented in Wales, one in eight older adults in the study, aged 86 and 87, were diagnosed with dementia. The researchers noted that those who received the shingles vaccine were 20 percent less likely to develop dementia compared to their unvaccinated peers.

“We understand that if you take one thousand people born randomly within one week and another thousand born a week later, they should not differ on average,” stated study author Pascal Geldsetzer in a statement from Stanford. “They are essentially comparable aside from this slight age difference.”

He continued to explain that other “associational studies face inherent flaws since people who choose to get vaccinated often display different health behaviors than those who do not,” making them insufficient as evidence for strong recommendations.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises that Americans aged 50 and above should receive a newer vaccine that has shown to be more effective against shingles than its predecessor.

The CDC estimates that approximately one in three Americans will contract shingles. While recovery is common, it can lead to severe complications. Infections near the eye may result in vision loss, and about 20 percent of shingles patients experience debilitating nerve pain long after the rash has resolved, officials caution.

Shingles and chickenpox are caused by the same virus, Herpes zoster. Once a person contracts chickenpox, typically during childhood, the virus can remain dormant in nerve cells, reactivating later when the immune system becomes weakened, which leads to shingles, according to health officials.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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