The question I continue to ask: what if we had vaccines against all of the herpesviruses? What diseases would vanish or largely vanish? Most adults have EBV and chronic CMV infections for life. What if we could stop that?

How do you think the childhood varicella vaccine will impact future Alzheimer’s prevalence?

My wife and I have had our 2 shots. Everyone should get them.

Signal keeps getting harder to ignore

Still open to patient selection bias: patients with early stage but undiagnosed dementia (less communicative, less socially adept), may be less likely to receive the vaccine. Seems the more probable interpretation, given the clean and rapid separation of the curves.

That was exactly the topic of discussion I had with him. There’s evidence that MANY regularly recommended vaccines can reduce our chances of dementia/Alzheimer’s. In fact, treating w/ anti-virals, for those with herpes, is being studied in relationship to Alzheimer’s.

The mechanism is getting hard to ignore. Varicella zoster reactivation drives neuroinflammation and small-vessel damage in the brain. Suppress the reactivation and you blunt that chronic hit. The signal now spans too many large cohorts and designs to be confounding alone.

The signal has been consistent enough that I got my shingles vaccine last year. Dementia prevention is not settled, but for older adults the risk-benefit already looks compelling.

Any studies on currently available shingles vaccine? Zostavax no longer available.

Great substack article and excellent summary, Eric. The USC study you highlighted from Jung Ki Kim and colleagues ...3,884 participants in the Health & Retirement Study, age 70+... is particularly compelling. The 7 biological domains ... adaptive & innate immunity, inflammation, epigenetic & transcriptomic aging are the key AD and dementia risk factors, and it makes sense why vaccines are protective. Preventing infections that fuel systemic inflammation could be one way to keep those support cells “younger” longer. Vaccines like this may turn out to be one of the more practical tools we have for brain health in aging populations. And yes ... the anti-vax noise is real, and I am careful ... but I really appreciate your push on this subject because we need science giants to keep pushing the importance of vaccines like this.

This might seem like too much common sense, but if the brains of the dementia were tested for toxicants, (Pb, Hg, Al, Cd, As, Sb), and if these toxic burdens were proactively mitigated, people might not get dementia.

Bahahaha yea right who funded this study ?

Offsets the 28% rise in dementia with glucosamine chondroitin via the UF study?

Shingrix is manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline. This study was paid for by GlaxoSmithKline. This is stated at the bottom of the webpage Topol linked.

Any research on whether the chickenpox vaccine has similar benefits? With an entire generation of kids getting a chickenpox vax (and therefore never having chickenpox), there’s really no need for a shingles vax later in life.

Talk about this as a herpes vaccine and it starts to make more sense

We can predict and substantially prevent Alzheimer’s disease

"Natural experiments", not RCTs. Maybe people who CHOOSE to get vaccinated have conditioned themselves to have more efficient processes re. brain waste cleanup to prevent neurodegeneration.

Don’t tell MAGA that

@grok what are some possible mechanisms for this? Was everyone already exposed to chickenpox/varicella? What if they already had shingles once?

Die Studie besagt: 6 Jahre nach der Impfung traten angeblich 24% weniger Demenzfälle auf. Die klinischen Symptome von Demenz treten aber erst 15 bis 30 Jahre nach Beginn dieser Erkrankung auf. Angesichts dessen sollte leicht erkennbar sein, dass diese Studie großer Bullshit ist.

🤣🤡🤣

What is the number needed to treat to prevent one case of dementia ?

Fascinating. I wish the full articles were not behind paywalls. I want to know the maths. (Yes I am a nerd)

I sure as heck hope this is real.

I wonder how many of our diseases are microbially related? It’s like they kickstart a cascade of failing health and our diet adds to it. Especially mitochondrial dysfunction.

It's probably half right

And again showing greater effects in women. Super interesting.

I'm not doubting the vaccine, but I do also wonder how many improved because they were out of their home for a period of time. Many ppl don't realize their home environment can be riddled with toxin exposure. That would be an interesting study some day.

Supi, dann lass ich mich gleich morgen impfen! Geht das auch, obwohl in meinem Impfpass steht, dass ich in diesem Jahr schon 32 mal gegen Gürtelrose geimpft wurde? Ich kann mich daran überhaupt nicht erinnern! Ähm, was wollte ich gleich nochmal hier?

should be given to anyone with a history of varicella, regardless of age.

The abstract says a 6% reduced risk after 4 years.

Death sure protects from dementia

What is the hypothesized mechanism?