CNN – The shingles vaccine not only offers protection against the painful viral infection, but a new study suggests that the two-dose shot also may slow the progression of dementia.
Shingles, caused by the varicella-zoster virus, presents as a painful rash and it’s estimated that about 1 in every 3 people in the United States will develop the illness in their lifetime.
But the risk of shingles and serious complications increases with age, which is why in the United States, two doses of the shingles vaccine is recommended for adults 50 and older.
While vaccination is estimated to be more than 90% effective at preventing shingles in older adults, recent research has shed light on some other potential benefits too.
Emerging research suggests that getting the vaccine to protect against shingles may reduce the risk of developing dementia.
A follow-up study, published Tuesday in the journal Cell, adds to that research by suggesting that the vaccine could also have therapeutic properties against dementia, by slowing the progression of the disease, leading to a reduced risk of dying from the disease.
“We see an effect on your probability of dying from dementia among those who already have dementia,” Dr. Pascal Geldsetzer, assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University and senior author of the new study, said about the potential effects of the shingles vaccine.
“That means that the vaccine doesn’t just have a preventive potential, but actually a therapeutic potential as a treatment, because we see some benefits already among those who have dementia,” he said. “To me, this was really exciting to see and unexpected.”
The new study comes just months after Geldsetzer and his colleagues previously found evidence that shingles vaccination may offer a “dementia-preventing” or “dementia-delaying” effect.
In that previous study, the researchers analyzed the health records of older adults in Wales, where a shingles vaccination program for adults in their 70s was introduced on September 1, 2013 …
