I asked for it because someone in my family got Shingles in retirement, and it is a troublesome, painful disease.
There seems to be an unexpected benefit.
"In 2013, Wales rolled out Zostavax to those aged 70-79 on September 1. The cut-off meant that anyone turning 80 after that date could get jabbed but everyone older, even by one day, never became eligible.
As Geldsetzer puts it, that policy created “these beautiful comparison groups. If you take 1,000 people born one week, and compare them to 1,000 people born a week later, there shouldn’t be anything [systematically] different between them except for their probability of getting the shingles vaccine.”
The two groups in Wales, comprising over 280,000 people, did show a striking difference over the next seven years: the vaccine-eligible group were 20 per cent less likely to receive a dementia diagnosis. Eric Topol, a US researcher who writes the Ground Truths medical blog, surveyed the evidence and concluded recently: “If this vaccine was a drug and reduced Alzheimer’s by 20 per cent, it would be considered a major breakthrough.”
FT.com
Much more info available.
Hooray for the NHS and its data collection. Drug companies should be paying billions for access.
en.wikipedia.org
There seems to be an unexpected benefit.
"In 2013, Wales rolled out Zostavax to those aged 70-79 on September 1. The cut-off meant that anyone turning 80 after that date could get jabbed but everyone older, even by one day, never became eligible.
As Geldsetzer puts it, that policy created “these beautiful comparison groups. If you take 1,000 people born one week, and compare them to 1,000 people born a week later, there shouldn’t be anything [systematically] different between them except for their probability of getting the shingles vaccine.”
The two groups in Wales, comprising over 280,000 people, did show a striking difference over the next seven years: the vaccine-eligible group were 20 per cent less likely to receive a dementia diagnosis. Eric Topol, a US researcher who writes the Ground Truths medical blog, surveyed the evidence and concluded recently: “If this vaccine was a drug and reduced Alzheimer’s by 20 per cent, it would be considered a major breakthrough.”
FT.com
Much more info available.
Hooray for the NHS and its data collection. Drug companies should be paying billions for access.
Epidemiology - Wikipedia
Last edited:
