Shingles Shot May Offer More Benefits Than Thought

A new study out of USC adds to evidence that the shingles vaccine does more than help ward off a painful rash. The research published in the Journal of Gerontology suggests that the shot actually slows biological aging in people 70 and older, per Science Daily. Researchers examined data from more than 3,800 older adults in a national health study and found that those who had received the shingles vaccine scored better on several measures tied to how the body ages, including inflammation and cellular aging markers.

Vaccinated participants had lower levels of long-term, low-grade inflammation and slower "epigenetic" and "transcriptomic" aging—changes in how genes are regulated and expressed—than their unvaccinated peers, even if the shot was given four or more years earlier. The findings, which don't prove cause and effect, add to earlier work linking adult vaccines like shingles and flu shots to reduced risks of dementia and other age-related conditions.

"Our best guess is that shingles vaccination averts one in five new dementia diagnoses over a seven-year period," Stanford's Pascal Geldsetzer, who published a separate study earlier this month in Lancet Neurology on the apparent dementia benefits, tells the Economist. A story at Vox notes that the "circumstantial case for the shingles shot has grown robust" since the first vaccine emerged in 2006, and the new studies are providing evidence to back that up. However, the piece adds that more research is needed, particularly on the newer version of the vaccine, Shingrix, now in wide circulation.