“Researchers who tracked cases of dementia in Welsh adults have uncovered the strongest evidence yet that the shingles vaccination reduces the risk of developing the devastating brain disease. Health records of more than 280,000 older adults revealed that those who received a largely discontinued shingles vaccine called Zostavax were 20% less likely to be diagnosed with dementia over the next seven years than those who went without,” reports The Guardian.
Stanford University’s Pascal Geldsetzer says that “we are able to say much more confidently that the shingles vaccine causes a reduction in dementia risk. If this truly is a causal effect, we have a finding that’s of tremendous importance.”
The Guardian reports that
The researchers took advantage of a vaccination rollout that took place in Wales more than a decade ago. Public health policy dictated that from 1 September 2013, people born on or after 2 September 1933 became eligible for the Zostavax shot, while those who were older missed out.
The policy created a natural experiment where the older population was sharply divided into two groups depending on their access to the vaccine. This allowed the researchers to compare dementia rates in older people born weeks apart but on either side of the vaccine eligibility divide….
Zostavax was rolled out in the US in 2006, several studies found lower rates of dementia in people who received the shots. Last year, Oxford researchers reported an even stronger protective effect in people who received Shingrix, a newer vaccine.
In the United States, people today are two-thirds less likely to experience dementia at any given age than they were 40 years ago. Many people still do get dementia, but that’s because they live so much longer than they used to, and dementia rates rise as you get older.
The Guardian says that dementia afflicts more than 55 million people across the world, and “is the leading cause of death in the UK.”
Third World countries used to have a nasty disease called Guinea worm. That disease caused millions of people to scream with unbearable pain. Guinea worms used to infest millions of people in Africa and South Asia every year. They would grow up to 3 feet long while living inside a person’s body, then burst out of their foot or other sensitive areas of their anatomy, such as their eyeball or their penis.
But that disease has been essentially eradicated: “No guinea worm was reported” in 2024.
Last year, nine nations eradicated a devastating disease, such as sleeping sickness, which causes irreversible brain damage, aggressive behavior, and then death.
