Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The shingles vaccine may reduce the risk of dementia

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 234 posts

Re: The shingles vaccine may reduce the risk of dementia

#151

Post by js2 »

daft_pink wrote: post #133
js2 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the topic of vaccines, if you were vaccinated against measles before it switched to the two-dose schedule (1989 in the US), you might want to have your titers measured. I was vaccinated in the early 70s when it was a single dose. With measles in the news recently, I asked my doc to add a measles antibodies test to my blood draw. Came back negative. No immunity. I went to the local pharmacy and got an MMR booster t…

If you were vaccinated on the normal schedule, what year would you generally be born to be vaccinated with the single dose?

In the U.S., the second dose was added in 1989 so around then. You might've also gotten a booster in the U.S. if you were born earlier but lived in a college dormitory.

If you're not sure, get tested. It's a simple blood draw.

Re: The shingles vaccine may reduce the risk of dementia

#152

Post by DANmode »

bitwize wrote: post #82
dymk wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says that one possible reason the vaccine protects against dementia is incidental protection from other diseases. Getting chickenpox as a kid might protect you against shingles, but maybe not against those other diseases.

Getting chicken pox as a kid means you already have the H. zoster virus in your system, and when you get older as your immune system weakens, it may come out for a second go around, manifesting as shingles. Having had chicken pox as a kid is one of the reasons why I got my Shingrix as soon as I was able.

> it may come out for a second go around

or third. fifteenth.

We don’t track reinfection well.

We don’t really define infection well (especially in a context where you’re waiting 2-6 weeks for an appointment to get bloodwork ordered, by which point the blood is often irrelevant to the complaint 2-6 weeks prior).

Not in practice, anyway.

Re: The shingles vaccine may reduce the risk of dementia

#153

Post by dboreham »

dataflow wrote: post #107
Aurornis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get basically any medication or vaccination you want in the US as long as you can find a doctor to write the prescription. We even have anabolic steroids that were approved for muscle wasting in cancer patients, but if you can find a doctor willing to write the prescription and a pharmacy that won’t question it, anyone can have pharmacy grade Anavar for the gym, completely legal. In theory the doctor writing…

> You can get basically any medication or vaccination you want in the US as long as you can find a doctor to write the prescription. Is that not usually true in other countries?

I doubt you need a prescription for most vaccines. Typically there's some sort of guidelines that might say normally given to over 55 years old, but there will be some wiggle room due to other hard to prove preconditions such as family history of xxx or sensitivity to yyy. You say you have one of those things and Costco or the public health dept. will give you the vaccine no questions asked. For example when the COVID-19 vaccine was rolled out it was supposed to be for older people, but also people with various other (not easy to test for) preconditions such as asthma. So everyone who wasn't an anti-vaxxer developed asthma.

Medications are different. Need prescription for that, although $$ and a zoom call can solve that problem.

Re: The shingles vaccine may reduce the risk of dementia

#154

Post by DANmode »

tptacek wrote: post #65
Jolter wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have already had shingles as an adult, aren’t you fairly well protected for the next ten years or so, at least? I’d wager that you are one of the people least at risk since your immune system is already primed and readying suppress the virus that’s latently infecting you.

You are more likely to have a recurrence of shingles after once having it before. At any rate, I had mine more than 10 years ago.

Yep! You rarely kill off all of the bugs.

Usually just most, except some in your organs where your immune response is different, out of necessity.

Then, if your immune functionality drops below a certain threshold that they can replicate inhibited, and leave the fort, you’re dealing with a systemic infection again.

Re: The shingles vaccine may reduce the risk of dementia

#156

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

scrollop wrote: post #77
robot_jesus wrote: post #5

I'm in my 40s with genetic predisposition for Alzheimer's. Been seriously considering the past year or two paying out of pocket for Shingrix. I think it would be ~$500 total for two doses. Sure, I could wait 7 or 8 years until I qualify via insurance, but is that really worth the risk for what is an easily absorbed cost to me? Especially when I have a friend in her late 30s who just went through a very rough bout of…

There were a few studies around 2022 showing the influenza vaccines and pneumoccocal vaccines reduce alzheimers (influenza by up to a whopping 40%!). I tell me patients this to increase uptake, so we can reduce alzheimer's prevalence. (I'm a doctor)

Do you have a link to these studies? I ask because, as another commenter mentioned, I think it would be very difficult to tease out cause and effect and I think the "healthy vaccinee" hypothesis could easily explain why so often you see the association between any vaccine (just here we have shingles, influenza and pneumococcal) and Alzheimer's risk reduction.

To be clear, I would get those vaccines regardless for their stated effectiveness, it just feels like so many observational conclusions ("moderate red wine is good for you!") have been proven to be non-causitive correlations when examined more closely.

Edit: Actually, the youtube link posted above talks about tons of vaccines where observational studies show reduced Alzheimer's risk: https://youtu.be/qlTnnQytOJ0?t=340

Re: The shingles vaccine may reduce the risk of dementia

#157

Post by subscribed »

pasc1878 wrote: post #109
subscribed wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like the GP is in the UK. I tried to go private (also not 50), but everyone just refused. Pharmacy, GP, private GP. Currently I'm arranging it in the third country because WTAF. (UK becoming the dirtiest and sickest country of Europe one more time)

The age for shingles vaccine in the UK under the NHS (so free) is 65. Of course I got shingles when I was 64. Caught early and got anti-virals and had no lasting effects.

I wanted to pay the full price, but pharmacies (Boots, Lloyds, couple of small ones) refused citing NICE guidance, GP and private GP refused to "prescribe" it.

Re: The shingles vaccine may reduce the risk of dementia

#158

Post by pocksuppet »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #38
hereme888 wrote: post #10

Replicated association, which is strong, but not proof. Initial study saw a 3.5% absolute reduction in dementia diagnoses over seven years with a very wide confidence interval. In Australia the study was replicated with 1.8% absolute reduction over 7.4 yrs. Canadian replication: 2% over 5.5 yrs. Infections generally increase the risk of future dementia. Like the more colds you have throughout life.

> like the more colds you have in life Whoa wait what? This is the first time I’ve heard of this - is this actually common knowledge?

This isn't common knowledge. This is something people (non-experts) are starting to infer, because we're seeing it with Long COVID - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48877214 - but there's no reason to think this is something special about SARS-CoV-2 - it could just as well happen with all viral infections but we weren't looking.

It reminds me that we didn't look at vaccine efficacy at the individual level until SARS-CoV-2. People were getting upset that SARS-CoV-2 vaccines only have a moderate chance to stop you getting the virus, and usually lessen its impact if you do get it, and calling this an ineffective vaccine. But the truth is, we have no idea whether every previous vaccine was also like that, because we only ever looked at the population level: when lots of people get the vaccine, the virus dies out.

Re: The shingles vaccine may reduce the risk of dementia

#159

Post by WalterBright »

robot_jesus wrote: post #5

I'm in my 40s with genetic predisposition for Alzheimer's. Been seriously considering the past year or two paying out of pocket for Shingrix. I think it would be ~$500 total for two doses. Sure, I could wait 7 or 8 years until I qualify via insurance, but is that really worth the risk for what is an easily absorbed cost to me? Especially when I have a friend in her late 30s who just went through a very rough bout of…

When covid struck, I went and got revaccinated for the usual - MMR, Polio, etc.

Re: The shingles vaccine may reduce the risk of dementia

#160

Post by gdudeman »

reenorap wrote: post #115
robot_jesus wrote: post #5

I'm in my 40s with genetic predisposition for Alzheimer's. Been seriously considering the past year or two paying out of pocket for Shingrix. I think it would be ~$500 total for two doses. Sure, I could wait 7 or 8 years until I qualify via insurance, but is that really worth the risk for what is an easily absorbed cost to me? Especially when I have a friend in her late 30s who just went through a very rough bout of…

This finding of shingles and dementia is likely due to “healthy vaccinee” bias as per the link someone else posted below: https://youtu.be/qlTnnQytOJ0?is=XJ0c5pWVV6Lg0IMs As per one of the slides around 7 minutes in, there are many vaccines that show a 20-40% reduction in mortality and dementia. The talk above basically says that “observational studies” may show great results, like the so-called protective action of…

This really isn't the case in the Shingles vaccine unless the UK study is flawed a way that isn't clear to me.

The study looked at the effect of being eligible for a vaccine and the results were clear. (see chart below the fold here: https://erictopol.substack.com/p/the-shingles-vaccine-and-re...)

There was a hard age cutoff in the UK study. Above a certain age, you weren't eligible. Below it, you were. People who were born in the "can get the vaccine" group have markedly lower rates of dementia. People in the "too old" group have higher rates. It's one of those studies where you don't even need to look at the p-value to see the difference.

I'm very open to being wrong about this!

Post reply on HN