A new shingles vaccine on the NHS could ‘significantly’ delay the onset of dementia.
Researchers at the University of Oxford found that the Shingrix shingles vaccine lowered the risk of dementia by at least 17% in in the six years after vaccination, which is more effective than the previous Zostavax jab.
Maxime Taquet, lead researcher and clinical lecturer in Oxford’s psychiatry department said that the size and nature of the study, which involved 200,000 people, made the findings ‘convincing’. ‘If validated in clinical trials, these findings could have significant implications for older adults, health services and public health.’
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Shingles is a painful, serious condition that is more common in older people. Also known as herpes zoster, it results from reactivation of the varicella-zoster virus that causes chickenpox in childhood.
In 2017, the United States switched from using Zostavax to Shingrix to treat shingles. Both target the herpes zoster virus preventing it from flaring up in people who have previously had chickenpox. Since then, there has been growing evidence that the jab could help protect against dementia. The Oxford study is the first large-scale research undertaken to discover if there is a link.
In the study, researchers compared the health records of people in the US who had the older Zostavax jab with the newer Shingrix vaccine, which is increasingly used in the UK. They found that on average, those who had the new jab had an extra 164 days free from a diagnosis of dementia over six years.
Co-author Professor Paul Harrison said: ‘Even if it is a delay of 164 days, for example, on the public health level, that would not be a trivial finding. It is a big enough effect that if the link is proved, it feels meaningful to us.’
Alzheimer's Research UK welcomed the study, but Sheona Scales, its director of research, said that further study is ‘critical’ to establish not only if Shingrix worked against dementia but to establish how it achieved the effect biologically.
‘While research into whether vaccines affect dementia risk continues, people should be aware that there are other factors that have definitively been linked to an increased dementia risk, such as smoking, high blood pressure and excessive alcohol consumption,’ said Scales.
In the UK, a free shingles vaccine, is available to people who turn 65, those aged between 70 and 79, and people aged 50 and over who have a severely weakened immune system. The older shingles vaccines are now being replaced with Shingrix on the NHS.