Comment by drewg123
2 years ago
The most interesting thing that I saw was: "We find strong protective effects of the vaccine for women but none for men, and that this diff is driven by Alzheimer’s (not vascular) dementia."
I've been meaning to get around to getting the shingles vaccine. I was all set to head out the the pharmacy to get it immediately until I read that..
Get it anyway, you don't want shingles.
Yeah Shingles is awful.
Even a mild case sucks a lot.
You have to be careful how you read that. The researchers did not find that the shingles vaccine does not protect men (from dementia caused by Alzheimer's). They failed to find statistically significant evidence, in their studied population, that the vaccine protects men.
As the preceding sentence says, this can be plausibly explained by the fact that shingles is more common in women, so whatever protective effect the vaccine has is larger and more measurable.
The paper found absolutely no effect in men. That is to say: No trend nor indication that it might protect men.
Sometimes trends seem suggestive of a real effect, but don't rise to statistical significance. That is not the case here.
This is in Figure 4 of the preprint.
It could also be that there is a potential effect that this study would have been underpowered to detect, and by chance no trend was visible in this population. That's not inconsistent, or even particularly unlikely, if I'm understanding it right.
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Also, the study was based on the Zostavax, the live virus shingles vaccine. It was discontinued in 2020 (at least in the US) in favor of Shingrix which doesn't have live virus. Unclear whether Shingrix will have the same effects, though seems reasonable to think it might.
So you're hesitating to get the shingles vaccine because you found out it might not protect you against dementia? Don't you want to be protected against shingles?
You should get the vaccine. Shingles is awful.