By Damla Delialioglu, Sercan Irkin and Seda Sevencan
ANKARA / ISTANBUL (AA) – Older adults who get the shingles vaccine have a 20% lower risk of developing dementia compared to those who are unvaccinated, according to a new US study.
Researchers at California’s Stanford University analyzed the health records of about 280,000 adults age 71-88 who had not been previously diagnosed with dementia.
Published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, the study, which spanned seven years, found that individuals who got the shingles vaccine Zostavax at regular intervals had a significantly lower risk of developing the condition.
The vaccine was found to be more effective in women than in men.
Paul Harrison, a researcher at the University of Oxford, told The New York Times: “If you’re reducing the risk of dementia by 20 percent, that’s quite important in a public health context, given that we don’t really have much else at the moment that slows down the onset of dementia.”
Shingles is a viral infection caused by the reactivation of the varicella-zoster virus, the same virus that causes chickenpox. The infection causes a painful skin rash that blisters.