The effect of shingles vaccination at different stages of the dementia disease course.
Cell. 2025 Dec 11; 188(25):7049-7064.e20.Cell

Abstract

Using natural experiments, we have previously reported that live-attenuated herpes zoster (HZ) vaccination appears to have prevented or delayed dementia diagnoses in both Wales and Australia. Here, we find that HZ vaccination also reduces mild cognitive impairment diagnoses and, among patients living with dementia, deaths due to dementia. Exploratory analyses suggest that the effects are not driven by a specific dementia type. Our approach takes advantage of the fact that individuals who had their eightieth birthday just after the start date of the HZ vaccination program in Wales were eligible for the vaccine for 1 year, whereas those who had their eightieth birthday just before were ineligible and remained ineligible for life. The key strength of our natural experiments is that these comparison groups should be similar in all characteristics except for a minute difference in age. Our findings suggest that live-attenuated HZ vaccination prevents or delays mild cognitive impairment and dementia and slows the disease course among those already living with dementia.

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Authors+Show Affiliations

Xie M

Heidelberg Institute of Global Health, Heidelberg University Hospital, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany; Division of Primary Care and Population Health, Department of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.

Eyting M

Division of Primary Care and Population Health, Department of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA; Faculty of Law and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, 55122 Mainz, Germany; Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Bommer C

Division of Primary Care and Population Health, Department of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.

Ahmed H

Division of Population Medicine, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF14 4YS, UK.

Geldsetzer P

Division of Primary Care and Population Health, Department of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA; The Phil and Penny Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience at the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA; Stanford Center for Digital Health, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA; Biohub, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA. Electronic address: pgeldsetzer@stanford.edu.

MeSH

HumansDementiaAgedMaleFemaleAged, 80 and overCognitive DysfunctionHerpes Zoster VaccineVaccinationWalesHerpes ZosterMiddle Aged

Pub Type(s)

Journal Article

Language

eng

PubMed ID

41338191

Citation

Xie, Min, et al. "The Effect of Shingles Vaccination at Different Stages of the Dementia Disease Course." Cell, vol. 188, no. 25, 2025, pp. 7049-7064.e20.

Xie M, Eyting M, Bommer C, et al. The effect of shingles vaccination at different stages of the dementia disease course. Cell. 2025;188(25):7049-7064.e20.

Xie, M., Eyting, M., Bommer, C., Ahmed, H., & Geldsetzer, P. (2025). The effect of shingles vaccination at different stages of the dementia disease course. Cell, 188(25), 7049-e20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2025.11.007

Xie M, et al. The Effect of Shingles Vaccination at Different Stages of the Dementia Disease Course. Cell. 2025 Dec 11;188(25):7049-7064.e20. PubMed PMID: 41338191.

* Article titles in AMA citation format should be in sentence-case

TY - JOUR T1 - The effect of shingles vaccination at different stages of the dementia disease course. AU - Xie,Min, AU - Eyting,Markus, AU - Bommer,Christian, AU - Ahmed,Haroon, AU - Geldsetzer,Pascal, Y1 - 2025/12/02/ PY - 2025/4/13/received PY - 2025/9/16/revised PY - 2025/11/5/accepted PY - 2025/12/13/medline PY - 2025/12/4/pubmed PY - 2025/12/3/entrez PY - 2026/1/29/pmc-release KW - Alzheimer’s disease KW - dementia KW - herpes zoster KW - immunization KW - mild cognitive impairment KW - natural experiment KW - quasi-experiment KW - vaccination KW - varicella zoster virus SP - 7049 EP - 7064.e20 JF - Cell JO - Cell VL - 188 IS - 25 N2 - Using natural experiments, we have previously reported that live-attenuated herpes zoster (HZ) vaccination appears to have prevented or delayed dementia diagnoses in both Wales and Australia. Here, we find that HZ vaccination also reduces mild cognitive impairment diagnoses and, among patients living with dementia, deaths due to dementia. Exploratory analyses suggest that the effects are not driven by a specific dementia type. Our approach takes advantage of the fact that individuals who had their eightieth birthday just after the start date of the HZ vaccination program in Wales were eligible for the vaccine for 1 year, whereas those who had their eightieth birthday just before were ineligible and remained ineligible for life. The key strength of our natural experiments is that these comparison groups should be similar in all characteristics except for a minute difference in age. Our findings suggest that live-attenuated HZ vaccination prevents or delays mild cognitive impairment and dementia and slows the disease course among those already living with dementia. SN - 1097-4172 UR - https://www.unboundmedicine.com/medline/citation/41338191/full_citation DB - PRIME DP - Unbound Medicine ER -

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The effect of shingles vaccination at different stages of the dementia disease course.Cell. 2025 Dec 11; 188(25):7049-7064.e20.Cell