Evidence map›Paper›PMID 41338191›Full record

ArticleCell2025

The effect of shingles vaccination at different stages of the dementia disease course.

Min Xie, Markus Eyting, Christian Bommer, Haroon Ahmed, Pascal Geldsetzer

Abstract read
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in Cell, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
13citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

13 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Review
  6. Article
  7. Global vaccine development.Nature medicine · 2026
    Review
  8. Immune signaling and function in neurodegeneration.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2026
    Review
  9. Is Alzheimer's an Autoimmune Disease?Molecular neurobiology · 2026
    Review
  10. Can we refute a role for infections in Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis?Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026
    Article
  11. Article
  12. Association between shingles vaccination and slower biological aging: evidence from a US population-based cohort study.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2026
    Article
  13. Review
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors.

Min XieHeidelberg Institute of Global Health, Heidelberg University Hospital, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany; Division of Primary Care and Population Health, Department of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Markus EytingDivision of Primary Care and Population Health, Department of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA; Faculty of Law and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, 55122 Mainz, Germany; Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Christian BommerDivision of Primary Care and Population Health, Department of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Haroon AhmedDivision of Population Medicine, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF14 4YS, UK.
Pascal GeldsetzerDivision of Primary Care and Population Health, Department of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA; The Phil and Penny Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience at the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA; Stanford Center for Digital Health, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA; Biohub, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA. Electronic address: pgeldsetzer@stanford.edu.

Funding

The impact of clinical interventions for sepsis in routine care and among detailed patient subgroups: A novel approach for causal effect estimation in electronic health record dataDP2AI171011 · NIAID · STANFORD UNIVERSITY · PI Pascal Geldsetzer · 2022 to 2026
$2.4M
The effect of antihypertensive and statin therapy on dementia incidence: a novel analytical approach in large electronic health record datasets with long follow-up times and minimal loss to follow-upR01AG084535 · NIA · STANFORD UNIVERSITY · PI Pascal Geldsetzer · 2024 to 2026
$2.2M
NIAID NIH HHS DP2 AI171011NIA NIH HHS R01 AG084535
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Using natural experiments, we have previously reported that live-attenuated herpes zoster (HZ) vaccination appears to have prevented or delayed dementia diagnoses in both Wales and Australia. Here, we find that HZ vaccination also reduces mild cognitive impairment diagnoses and, among patients living with dementia, deaths due to dementia. Exploratory analyses suggest that the effects are not driven by a specific dementia type. Our approach takes advantage of the fact that individuals who had their eightieth birthday just after the start date of the HZ vaccination program in Wales were eligible for the vaccine for 1 year, whereas those who had their eightieth birthday just before were ineligible and remained ineligible for life. The key strength of our natural experiments is that these comparison groups should be similar in all characteristics except for a minute difference in age. Our findings suggest that live-attenuated HZ vaccination prevents or delays mild cognitive impairment and dementia and slows the disease course among those already living with dementia.

Indexed as

DementiaHerpes ZosterHerpes Zoster VaccineAgedAged, 80 and overCognitive DysfunctionFemaleHumansMaleMiddle AgedVaccinationWalesHerpes Zoster VaccineAlzheimer’s diseasedementiaherpes zosterimmunizationmild cognitive impairmentnatural experimentquasi-experimentvaccinationvaricella zoster virus

Identifiers

PMID41338191
PMCPMC12851904

What Socratic holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.