Study Finds Adult Vaccines Potentially Protect Against Alzheimer’s

A new study conducted at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston found that people who received shingles and pneumonia vaccines — along with tetanus and diphtheria — had as much as a 30 percent reduced risk of developing Alzheimer’s, the most common type of dementia. It also found patients who received the pneumococcal vaccine — which protects against the bacteria that can lead to pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis — demonstrated a 27 percent lower chance of having an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Further, it found the shingles vaccine was linked to a 25 percent reduced risk.

The researchers followed patients who were at least 65 years old at the start of the eight-year study period who did not have dementia in the prior two years. They then compared groups of vaccinated and unvaccinated patients for each of the vaccines, looking at the occurrence of Alzheimer’s diagnoses. Prior to this study, the same research team published another study that showed people who got at least one influenza vaccine showed a 40 percent lower rate of Alzheimer’s than their unvaccinated peers. “We were wondering whether the influenza finding was specific to the flu vaccine,” said senior author Paul E. Schulz, MD, the Umphrey family professor in neurodegenerative diseases and director of the Neurocognitive Disorders Center at McGovern Medical School. “This data revealed that several additional adult vaccines were also associated with a reduction in the risk of Alzheimer’s.”