Over the past two centuries, vaccines have been very important to prevent infectious diseases. The World Health Organization estimates that annual vaccination of between 3 million and 5 million people prevents diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus, influenza, measles and more recently COVID-19.
While there has been a wide scientific consensus for a long time that vaccines prevent or reduce the prevalence of infections, there are new research that suggests that the therapeutic effect may exceed the benefits of preventing infectious diseases.
A study published in April 2025 published in the prominent journal of nature shows evidence that the herbal herbal vaccine – or zona – can reduce the risk of dementia by up to 20 %.
We are a team of physician scientists with expertise in clinical science and basic neurological disorders and dementia.
We believe that this study potentially opens the doors of other advances in understanding and treating dementia and other degenerative brain disorders.
The role of vaccines in reducing the risk of dementia?
One of the most important challenges that researchers face when trying to examine the effects of vaccines is to find a non -vaccine control group for comparison – a group that is similar to the vaccine group because they have not received active vaccine. The reason for this is unethical to assign some patients to the control group and deprive them of the protection of the vaccine against disease such as shingles.
The nature study used a change in politics in Wales, which was implemented in 2013, saying that people born on September 2, 1933, were eligible for at least a year of Zoster’s herpes vaccination, while those who had been cut before this date were not. This vaccine has caused a painful disease caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox, which can be dormant in the body and re -activated in life.
Researchers used policy change as a natural laboratory of varieties to investigate the effect of shingles vaccination on long -term health consequences. In a complex statistical analysis of health records, the team found that the vaccine reduces the likelihood of dementia one fifth over a seven -year period. This means that people who have received the Zona vaccine are less likely to dementia during the seven -year follow -up, and women benefit more than men.
The study plan allows researchers to compare two groups without actively depriving any vaccination groups. The two groups were also comparable to age and had a similar medical disease – meaning similar to other medical conditions such as diabetes or hypertension.
The results of these and other related studies cause the possibility that vaccines may have a wider role in experimental therapies outside the territory of infectious diseases.
These studies also raise provocative questions about how the vaccines operate and how our immune system potentially dementia.
How vaccines may be protective
One of the scientific explanations for reducing the dementia by the Zoroastrian herpes vaccine can be direct protection against the zona virus, which may play a role in the exacerbation of dementia.
However, the vaccine may also be protected by activating the immune system and providing a “trained immune”, in which the immune system is strengthened by repeated exposure to vaccines or viruses.
This study did not distinguish between different types of dementia, such as dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease or dementia due to stroke. In addition, the researchers cannot conclude a definitive conclusion on possible mechanisms on how to protect vaccines from the analysis of health records alone.
The next step can be a forward-looking, random, two-blind, controlled, “gold standard” study for clinical tests in medicine-to directly examine how the herbaceous herb vaccine is compared with placebo in their ability to reduce the risk of dementia over time. Such studies are recommended before any vaccine as well as other potential therapies that are recommended for clinical routine use in preventing dementia.
The challenges of dementia
Dynamism is an important non -communicable disease that is the main cause of death around the world.
A study in January 2025 presented updated figures on the risk of dementia in the various subsidiaries of the US population. Researchers estimate that the risk of dementia after 55 is 42 % – more than twice as much as previous estimates. The risk of dementia was 4 % at the age of 75 and 20 % at the age of 85 and the most risk occurs after 85. Researchers predicted that the number of new dementia in the United States will double in the next four decades from about 514,000 cases in 2020 to 1 million in 2060.
When a disease is intended to be mainly limited to the developed world, the harmful effects of dementia are now evident around the world, as life expectancy is increasing in many developing countries. While there are different forms of dementia with different clinical manifestations and basic neurology, Alzheimer’s disease is the most common.
Prospective studies that specifically test how the vaccine changes the risk of future dementia may benefit from the study of the patient’s population with specific types of dementia because each copy of dementia may require specific treatments.
Unfortunately, for the past two to three decades, the amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer’s disease – which causes protein called amyloid in the brain, helps with the disorder – has prevailed scientific dialogue. As a result, most efforts in experimental treatments Alzheimer’s disease are focused on drugs that reduce amyloid levels in the brain.
However, the results to date have been average and disappointing. These two recently approved amyloid methods are only less effective in slowing down, expensive, and have potential side effects. And no drug that is currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration for clinical consumption does not reverse cognitive reduction.
Health -based studies show that exposure to viruses increases the risk of dementia, while common vaccines, including those against tetanus, diphtheria, server, pneumonia, zona and others, reduce the risk.
Innovation and an open mind
Sometimes scientists tend to stick to older models, familiar with illness and unwilling to move in more unconventional directions.
However, the process of doing science is a way to educate researchers like us humility, open our minds to new information, learn from our mistakes, and go to where these data take us to our efforts to effective and rescue treatments.
Vaccines may be one of those paths that have been less followed. This is an exciting possibility that may be opened to understand and treat degenerative brain disorders in other advances.
Anand Kumar is a professor and head of the psychiatry department at the University of Illinois Chicago.
Jillos Rahman is the head of the department and professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at the University of Illinois Chicago.
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