{"id":3429,"date":"2025-04-28T17:37:37","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T15:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flex.uni-frankfurt.de\/?p=3429"},"modified":"2026-02-02T11:58:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T10:58:21","slug":"a-natural-experiment-on-the-effect-of-herpes-zoster-vaccination-on-dementia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flex.uni-frankfurt.de\/index.php\/focus\/a-natural-experiment-on-the-effect-of-herpes-zoster-vaccination-on-dementia\/","title":{"rendered":"A natural experiment on the effect of herpes zoster vaccination on dementia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent study published in Nature, FLEX researcher Markus Eyting and his co-authors Min Xie, Felix Michalik, Simon He\u00df, Seunghun Chung, and Pascal Geldsetzer exploit a natural experiment to investigate the causal effect of shingles vaccination on dementia risk.<br \/>\nThe opportunity for causal inference arose from the UK\u2019s rollout of the herpes zoster vaccine, which was based strictly on date of birth: individuals born on or after 2 September 1933 were eligible to receive the vaccine during the first year of the program, while those born just one day earlier were permanently ineligible. This created a quasi-random assignment of individuals into treatment and control groups, enabling the researchers to apply a regression discontinuity design. <!--newsroom--> <!--more Weiterlesen--><br \/>\nUsing large-scale electronic health records from Wales, the study tracked individuals&#8217; health outcomes over a seven-year period, up to September 2020. Vaccination rates increased sharply from 0.01% among those just too old to qualify to 47.2% among those eligible. This discontinuity allowed the authors to estimate the causal effect of vaccination: they found that receiving the zoster vaccine reduced the probability of a new dementia diagnosis by 3.5 percentage points, equivalent to a 20% relative reduction. The protective effect was particularly pronounced among women.<br \/>\nThe results were further validated using death certificate data from the combined populations of England and Wales, focusing on dementia as a primary cause of death. This additional evidence reinforces the conclusion that zoster vaccination may delay or prevent the onset of dementia.<br \/>\nBy exploiting a unique natural experiment, the study provides the first causal evidence that the shingles vaccine may have important off-target benefits for brain health.<br \/>\nThe complete scientific publication is available under the following <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-025-08800-x\"> link<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent study published in Nature, FLEX researcher Markus Eyting and his co-authors Min Xie, Felix Michalik, Simon He\u00df, Seunghun Chung, and Pascal Geldsetzer exploit a natural experiment to investigate the causal effect of shingles vaccination on dementia risk. The opportunity for causal inference arose from the UK\u2019s rollout of the herpes zoster vaccine, &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/flex.uni-frankfurt.de\/index.php\/focus\/a-natural-experiment-on-the-effect-of-herpes-zoster-vaccination-on-dementia\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;A natural experiment on the effect of herpes zoster vaccination on dementia&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3568,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flex.uni-frankfurt.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flex.uni-frankfurt.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flex.uni-frankfurt.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flex.uni-frankfurt.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flex.uni-frankfurt.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3429"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/flex.uni-frankfurt.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3433,"href":"https:\/\/flex.uni-frankfurt.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3429\/revisions\/3433"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flex.uni-frankfurt.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flex.uni-frankfurt.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flex.uni-frankfurt.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flex.uni-frankfurt.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}