So wife anon read recent news reports about how the shingles vaccine prevents Alzheimer's. Link to Vox article: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/407273/dementia-shingles-vaccine-alzheimers-virus-old-age
She sent me the study and encouraged me to get the shingles vaccine.
Of course, Anon was highly skeptical, doubting that it really inhibits Alzheimer's and suspecting that even if it does, comparing "all-cause" mortality would show it does more harm than good.
So decided to read the study for myself and learned the following:
Link to study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08800-x
There were nearly 300,000 subjects in the study, divided into two roughly equal size groups of vaxxed and non-vaxxed. Over a seven year period after the vax/start date, there was a lower incidence of Alzheimer's in the vaxxed group. The relative and absolute risk reductions were 20% and 3.5%, so basically, about 17.5% of unvaxxed subjects developed Alzheimer's within 7 years of the vax/start date, while only 14% of the vaxxed subjects did. This was reported as statistically significant (p = .019).
Ok, so perhaps there was a small inhibitory effect on Alzheimer's, but what if the vaxxed were dying in higher numbers, and folks that otherwise would have developed Alzheimer's were passing away before that could be diagnosed? That's possible, right? So began looking for the all-cause mortality data, and anon's jaw literally dropped when coming across this:
"Our primary analysis approach does not adjust for any competing risk of death for three reasons.
First and foremost, in the absence of a zoster vaccination program, there is no reason that the competing risk of death should differ across the 2 September 1933 date-of-birth eligibility threshold.
Second, not adjusting for competing risk of death in our setting is a conservative choice because eligibility for zoster vaccination may reduce (but is very unlikely to increase) all-cause mortality. Thus, those eligible for zoster vaccination will, on average, be exposed to a longer time period during which they could become newly diagnosed with dementia.
Third, to date, no well-established approach exists for survival analysis in a regression discontinuity framework, including the ability to determine the CACE and optimal bandwidth."
Effectively they are saying: We're not considering mortality differences because there is no reason to think there would be a difference, and even if there were, everyone knows that it would favor the vaxxed (i.e. the unvaxxed would die at higher rates).
What a SHIT study!
Don't get the shingles vaccine - at least not for its supposed Alzheimer's benefit!