This vaccine may help protect against dementia - and it's already available

By Brett Arends

Data show a correlation between use of a common vaccine and lower risk of getting dementia, a drug company executive said

Wendy Williams has it. Bruce Willis has it. Tony Bennett had it. So did Gene Wilder. Dementia is currently killing around seven million Americans, in one of the cruelest ways imaginable, and a staggering 55 million around the world. And still nobody knows what causes it.

But scientists at drugs giant GSK think they may have a drug that helps protect against it-and it's already on the market.

Company chief commercial officer Luke Miels says GSK internal data is showing "a correlation" between those who had taken the company's shingles vaccine, Shingrix, and a lower risk of getting dementia.

"It's work that we did in a U.S. database looking at historical usage of Shingrix, and yes, in the relationship-well, it's not a relationship, it's a correlation-between that and observed dementia," he told the recent TD Cowen Healthcare conference. "We're starting to look at that. We've got another publication coming and we're start[ing] to think about what's the appropriate next steps in terms of exploring that prospectively."

A treatment, he said, "could be transformational."

Indeed.

A GSK (GSK) spokeswoman confirmed that the company is looking at whether Shingrix could be a treatment to prevent dementia in addition to shingles. "There is a growing body of evidence evaluating whether shingles vaccination may reduce the risk for dementia," she told MarketWatch in a statement. "Further research is needed, and GSK is actively investigating to generate additional evidence to understand the possible association between shingles vaccination and dementia."

Miels pointed out that the company's data do not come in isolation. A few published studies have already suggested a link. "There's been a couple of studies, population-based retrospective studies, looking at the relationship between shingles vaccination and dementia," he said.

The biggest connection found previously is in a study that came out last year, involving a massive population of over five million seniors in Great Britain. It suggested that those who had been vaccinated against shingles, even if they were already well into their 70s or even their 80s at the time of the vaccination, were 20% less likely to develop dementia just over the following seven years.

The study took advantage of something that happened in Britain in 2013, when the country's National Health Service rolled out shingles vaccines for everyone born on or after Sept. 1, 1933, but completely excluded those born before that date. Pascal Geldsetzer, a professor of medicine at Stanford and one of the study's authors, says this created a real-world experiment similar to the kind you get in a lab, where people of similar age-in some cases just a few days or weeks apart-were randomly assigned into two groups.

"We are able to get credibly a causal effect because we are able to exploit this really unique way that the shingles vaccine was rolled out in Britain in the National Health Service," he tells MarketWatch. "It allows us to compare people who differ by just a week or two in their age. I think it's a really neat, clean way to mimic what we would do in a clinical trial."

Incidentally, these U.K. numbers might significantly understate any impact of shingles vaccines on future dementia, although we cannot know for sure. In most cases, those who got a vaccine only got one, rather than successive boosters. The follow-ups were only within seven years. And the study looked only at those who were given the vaccine in their 70s or older.

Shingles is caused by varicella zoster, the virus that causes chickenpox. It's of the same family of herpes viruses as herpes simplex, which causes cold sores. Both lie dormant in the body for life and can be reactivated at periods, for example when our immune systems get weaker as we age.

There has also been a lot of scientific research pointing to a connection between herpes simplex and dementia. Those who have had herpes at some point in their lives are twice as likely to develop dementia as those who haven't, one study found. In a review of the medical literature a few years ago, researchers in the journal Vaccines found "overwhelming evidence" for the case that herpes simplex had a major role in the development of dementia (specifically, Alzheimer's), and "underwhelming evidence" against.

Many or most of us, says Geldsetzer, have been infected with both viruses. So if one or both play a major role in the risk of getting dementia, then vaccinations may suddenly prove a huge field of opportunity in fighting one of the cruelest diseases.

-Brett Arends

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03-23-24 1210ET

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