The shingles shot keeps turning up next to lower dementia rates, study after study. That is worth your attention. It is not yet worth your certainty.
In the newest work, about 246 of every 1,000 unvaccinated older adults were diagnosed with dementia over four years, against about 188 of every 1,000 who had received Shingrix. A Welsh natural experiment, the closest thing here to a real trial, pointed the same way. But people who seek out a vaccine are healthier to begin with, and a shared bias produces consistently wrong answers as neatly as a real effect produces right ones. A roughly 162,000-person randomized trial, DAN-ZOSTER, is the test. Until it reports, the vaccine earns its place by sparing you shingles; whether it also guards the brain is a question we do not get to answer by wanting to.
