Vaccines may be training a part of our immune system long thought to be untrainable.
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Routine vaccines may cut dementia risk—experts have startling hypothesis on how
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If you're over the age of 50, please do. I'm in my 40's but I've had shingles twice. Unfortunately, the vaccine is only available in the US to adults over 50 or those with specific weakened/compromised immune systems/disease states. But shingles itself is so much worse than people tend to be aware. Crippling nerve pain and a risk of blindness if it gets in the ocular nerve. Even right now, I'm dealing with PHN (Postherpetic neuralgia) which is almost as bad as the shingles themselves and never really goes away.
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The possible protective benefits of BCG - and the duration of any protection - might be something mineable from existing health care data, given BCG has been widely administered in the past outside of America.
(I still have a pair of clearly visible scars on my left shoulder from BCG shots as a kid more than 40 years ago - a fairly common sign on Brits of my generation)
(I still have a pair of clearly visible scars on my left shoulder from BCG shots as a kid more than 40 years ago - a fairly common sign on Brits of my generation)
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I can still remember being put in a headlock by a teacher for that experience. It's funny how things like that stick with you for 30 years.
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I don’t think you read that correctly. Getting a higher dose is better. It said nothing about getting annual doses.
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Clearly, when the developing world develops into a gerontocracy it won’t be as bad as what we’re seeing in the U.S.
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The seasonal flu shot reducing dementia risk is intriguing but makes me wonder if the type of vaccine administered makes a difference. With mRNA flu vaccines arriving do they trigger the same innate immune response as the traditional vaccines?
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Yes, you do need to take the shingles vaccine. I've had shingles when I was 28 and again when I was 59. It was very painful when I was 28. Not so much when I was 59 because I remembered what it felt like when it started erupting and went to a doctor immediately. And yes, if you've had it once you'll never forget what it feels like.
(Edit for better word choice)
(Edit for better word choice)
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So if I'm understanding this correctly, the basic idea is that by periodically using an artificial method (vaccines) of stimulating an immune response, we're basically keeping our immune system revved up and capable of reacting to all pathogens - not just the ones we've trained our system to recognize?
That makes a lot of sense, but also seems to imply that dementia is caused by a specific pathogen that might eventually be identified, and presumably we could then develop a specific vaccine against that, right? If that's correct, it seems to me like maybe the most revolutionary idea in this research.
That makes a lot of sense, but also seems to imply that dementia is caused by a specific pathogen that might eventually be identified, and presumably we could then develop a specific vaccine against that, right? If that's correct, it seems to me like maybe the most revolutionary idea in this research.
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If I'm reading this correctly, what this means is that anti-vaxxers expect their bodies to do their own research.
Fitting.
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FTA:
"the quirky Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, which was designed to protect against tuberculosis, caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, but also used to treat bladder cancer (it’s still unclear how the vaccine works against this cancer)."
The rest of the story:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X2101046X
"the quirky Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, which was designed to protect against tuberculosis, caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, but also used to treat bladder cancer (it’s still unclear how the vaccine works against this cancer)."
The rest of the story:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X2101046X
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This is such a weird time for stronger evidence for vaccinations. The more evidence you show anti-vaxxers, the deeper into their demented anti-vax world they go.
Also of note is that the effect from seasonal flu seems to be dose dependent. My question is: does dosage follow lifestyle? In other words, I can see how someone’s lifestyle—especially if they have the discipline, time, and resources to get yearly flu vaccinations—could affect dementia risk independently of the vaccine itself. But would lifestyle change the actual dose someone receives? For example, does having more money mean getting more vaccine, better access, or more frequent vaccination?
Also of note is that the effect from seasonal flu seems to be dose dependent. My question is: does dosage follow lifestyle? In other words, I can see how someone’s lifestyle—especially if they have the discipline, time, and resources to get yearly flu vaccinations—could affect dementia risk independently of the vaccine itself. But would lifestyle change the actual dose someone receives? For example, does having more money mean getting more vaccine, better access, or more frequent vaccination?
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I think that is part of one idea (regarding any vaccine showing better responses to other pathogens).
The other idea is tamping down the inflammation response which can damage the brain and increase chance of/conditions for dementia. Dementia is broad category of many possible causes.
Vaccines help the body fight the infection quicker and easier, lowering the innate response of fever/inflammation.
Not an expert so my understanding may be off.
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I think that the effect is likely to be much more subtle than that. The general rule of the immune system seems to be that "Idle hands do the devil's work". We have understood for some time how infections and the need for lymphocyte homeostasis tend to keep the adaptive immune system more on task, and less on seeing what bits of its owner it can break. If the non-obviously autoimmune neurodegenerative diseases have a component of the innate immune system, it may be that having that system more primed for real threats has a similar effect on the off-purpose general damage pathway of the innate immune system. Which in this case could include exacerbating Alzheimers, FTD, Parkinson's ALS etc..
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After my stepfather got shingles, my wife and I got our vaccinations ASAFP. He was pretty much unable to function due to the pain for over a month.
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I am no longer in pharmacy practice, but when I was, it wasn't uncommon to see medications, including vaccines, given "off label". This means that a medication (or vaccine) approved by the FDA is used for a population or condition not in the approval group. For example giving trazodone, approved as an antidepressant, as a hypnotic (sleeping pill). If you have had multiple cases of shingles I doubt it would be hard to find a physician that would approve a course of Shingrix despite being outside the approved study group. It certainly wouldn't hurt to at least ask.
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Also some great mention of this vaccine in Everything is Tuberculosis (currently reading this and its fantastic)
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Platform technologies are not compared or discussed in the paper. The authors do distinguish between vaccines based on adjuvants and mechanisms of action (ie, AS01 adjuvant-dependent effects on training immunity).
I was actually impressed at exactly how clearly they present their working hypothesis in the paper:
"...certain vaccines, such as RZV and RSVPreF3/AS01, can induce both specific and non-specific protection, driven by the innate immune responses induced by adjuvants – which is close to the
proposed mode of action of BCG. This results in reductions of both the overall infectious disease burden and neuro-inflammation, mediated by myeloid cell reprogramming. The consequence of this would be a reduced involvement of b-amyloid-or phosphorylated Tau (pTau)-mediated innate immune responses in the brain, translating into a reduced risk of dementia and delay in onset of symptoms.
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2nd dose of Shingrix this week. Seasonal flu shot every year and mRNA C19 every six months.
I'm golden
I'm golden
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What you're getting at is one of the most commonly misunderstood concepts in science: correlation vs causation. Is the effect caused by the vaccine dose itself or is the effect caused by something else that is correlated with someone who receives the vaccine dose? Not always an easy question to answer and something that many published papers can't disentangle. But there is a fun website that offers some pretty great spurious correlations. https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
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Observations related to shingles and other viral infections/vaccinations align well with other observations about oral health and dementia wherein bacteria responsible for gingivitis have been spotted in the brain of Alzheimer's patients and correlates with severity. Both of these combined with the hallmark of compromised blood-brain barrier in Alzheimers seem to point to pathogens leaking into the brain, and the brain drowning itself in inflammation trying to deal with it. There's still a massive chicken and egg problem. Neuroinflammation can compromise the blood-brain barrier so its not yet clear if neuroinflammation comes first, or if leaky barrier is first and ramps inflammation leading to a feedback loop. Studying dementia is extremely difficult. My spouse did their dissertation work on dementia, and now works in pharma on dementias. I've worked a bit on dementia in pharma as well. One thing is for certain, neuroscience needs to break free of dogma. The brain is difficult to study, you can't just biopsy living people's brains like you can with skin, liver, lungs, muscle, etc. Nonetheless, the brain cannot be studied in a vacuum. And the amyloid focused approach has yet to bear fruit after decades. The amyloid mafia is very real. There are some experts in the field (who sit on committees to review and approve grants for the NIH) that will shut down anything that goes against their decades of research on the amyloid theory of alzheimers. So I'm glad to see other disciplines making progress and chipping away at the dogma.
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Freakonomics has a great episode talking about the lack of progress for Alzheimer's as well as the history of corruption - it's great that we're finally clearing the waters around it.
(Also great on Matthew Schrag for going back and having an independent audit of the papers he was involved in during his education)
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What a terrific article!
The shingles vaccine made me feel quite ill for a day and a half, probably a bigger response than I've had from all other vaccines combined. I gather from people who have had shingles that 36 hours of a bad flu is a small price to pay, and a lower risk of dementia is a cherry on top.
The shingles vaccine made me feel quite ill for a day and a half, probably a bigger response than I've had from all other vaccines combined. I gather from people who have had shingles that 36 hours of a bad flu is a small price to pay, and a lower risk of dementia is a cherry on top.
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I am 47 and got my shingles vaccine early. I was willing to pay the cost, but insurance still covered it which was shocking.
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"Lifestyle" is an interesting term, here--some of my coworkers started getting the annual flu vaccine when our employer started giving them for free at work. In earlier years, they would pay for the vaccine if we went to a specific nearby clinic, and fewer people bothered.
In these scary times, what state you live in may also be relevant: Massachusetts has fewer residents without health insurance than most states, and now officially recommends more vaccines than the federal government. That combination means more people who can get certain vaccines without paying for them specifically, and "it's free at the nearby drugstore" will increase uptake compared to having to go out of your way, or pay even a small fee.
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araczynski
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Shingles vac for 50+ is a no brainer, unless you're in the stupid clan, in which case I heartily suggest you do NOT get the vac and just suffer like your allah akbar jesus intended for you to suffer as proof of your loyalty to him and his minions on earth.
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Is there any data on whether getting the Shingrex vaccine shortly after having had shingles reduces that risk? Asking for a friend.
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The whole thing was just bizarre, and unimaginable nowadays ...
For the benefit of Americans who never had to experience it, the way this worked was about a week before the planned TB inoculation, the school nurse would come round and terrify all the kids with a metal gadget that punched a bunch of pin pricks in your skin (technically this was the Heaf Test ). A few days to a week later the nurse would then check - if you did have a noticeable reaction to the prick test, then you didn't get the BCG inoculation (tho' if it was a severe reaction you might get sent to hospital to check you didn't already have TB ...). If however you avoided much of a reaction to the prick test then you had the joy of the BCG jab. Either way if you were unlucky you might end up with an abscess, either at the test site or the injection site ..
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This is just another medical story that demonstrates the concept of unintended consequences for treatments. The unintended benefits of semaglutide and sildenafil are pretty well documented, but to my way of thinking aspirin is the oldest one I know. We all grew up thinking it was to relieve headaches. Who knew that millions would be taking it to prevent strokes or blood clots.
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