somewhat lower level of protection from the vaccine, will also benefit from it, Terebuh said.
The CDC now recommends RSV vaccination for people 75 and older, and for those 60 to 74 if they’ re at higher risk of severe illness.
As data from the 2024-25 season becomes available, researchers hope to determine whether the vaccine will remain a one-anddone, or whether immunity will require repeated vaccination.
People 65 and up express the greatest confidence in vaccine safety of any adult group, a KFF survey found in April. More than 80 % said they were“ very“ or“ somewhat confident” about MMR, shingles, pneumonia and flu shots.
Although the covid vaccine drew lower support among all adults, more than twothirds of older adults expressed confidence in its safety.
Even skeptics might become excited about one possible benefit of the shingles vaccine: This spring, Stanford researchers reported that over seven years, vaccination against shingles reduced the risk of dementia by 20 %, a finding that made headlines.
Biases often undermine observational studies that compare vaccinated with unvaccinated groups.“ People who are healthier and more health-motivated are the ones who get vaccinated,” said Pascal Geldsetzer, an epidemiologist at the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience at Stanford and lead author of the study.
So the Stanford team took advantage of a“ natural experiment” when the first shingles vaccine, Zostavax, was introduced in Wales. Health officials set a strict age cutoff: People who turned 80 on or before Sept. 1, 2013, weren’ t eligible for vaccination, but those even slightly younger were eligible.
In the sample of nearly 300,000 adults whose birthdays fell close to either side of that date, almost half of the eligible group received the vaccine, but virtually nobody in the older group did.
“ Just as in a randomized trial, these comparison groups should be similar in every way,” Geldsetzer explained. A substantial reduction in dementia diagnoses in the vaccine-eligible group, with a much stronger protective effect in women, therefore constitutes“ more powerful and convincing evidence,” he said.
The team also found reduced rates of dementia after shingles vaccines were introduced in Australia and other countries.“ We keep seeing this in one dataset after another,” Geldsetzer said.
In the United States, where a more potent vaccine, Shingrix, became available in 2017 and supplanted Zostavax, Oxford investigators found an even stronger effect.
By matching almost 104,000 older Americans who received a first dose of the new vaccine( full immunization requires two) with a group that had received the earlier formulation, they found delayed onset of dementia in the Shingrix group.
AP PHOTO / MATT ROURKE A syringe is prepared with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination clinic at the Keystone First Wellness Center in Chester, Pa., on Dec. 15, 2021. Pfizer is expected to request authorization for an additional COVID-19 booster dose for seniors.
How a shingles vaccine might reduce dementia remains unexplained. Scientists have suggested that viruses themselves may contribute to dementia, so suppressing them could protect the brain. Perhaps the vaccine revs up the immune system in general or affects inflammation. A connection to dementia will require further research, and Geldsetzer is trying to raise philanthropic funding for a clinical trial.
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