So residents of Wales born on either side of the divorce date were linked to their use of preventive health services, diagnoses from the past and level of education. The incidence of dementia was then compared between people on either side of 2 September 1933. As a first step, the researchers confirmed that the vaccine was effective in reducing the incidence of shingles, with numbers comparable to those in the clinical tests of the vaccine.
In general, it was eligible for the vaccine associated with a reduction of 1.3 percent in the absolute risk of a diagnosis of dementia. This translates into a reduction in the relative risk of 8.5 percent; When scaled to take into account the fact that less than half of the eligible vaccine received, this will be a reduction in the relative risk of 20 percent, which is fairly substantial.
To ensure that it was real, the researchers repeated the analysis with the help of a difference-in-difference approach and there were about the same figures. This also eliminates the possibility that people who came in for health care (for shingles or another condition) more often received a diagnosis of dementia. They also compared the before and after populations in terms of a collection of common health results and discovered that none of these only changes in the two populations. And nothing else with regard to the NHS policy was changed on the basis of the date of 2 September.
In a concept manuscript, the researchers find the researchers on the MedXIV separately, a similar effect in the use of British HNS data to look for a protective effect of the shingles vaccins when it comes to killing diagnosed to arise from dementia. So because of all indications, the effect was real.
What's going on?
The researchers suggest three possible explanations. One of them is obvious: suppressing the reactivation of the Varicella zoster -virus reduces the start of dementia. But it is also possible that the effect is indirect – that dementia is associated with immune activity, and the vaccine changes that in one way or another. Finally, there is the possibility that the start of dementia could be treated for shingles or can increase the frequency of diagnoses.
