Kim Beckham, an insurance agent in Victoria, Texas, had seen friends so badly through shingles that she wanted to receive the first approved shingles vaccine as soon as it became available, even if she had to pay outside the owner.
Her doctor and various pharmacies rejected her because at that time she was under the recommended age, which was 60. So in 2016 she celebrated her 60th birthday on her local CVs.
“I was there when they opened,” Beckham recalled. After making her Zostavax recording, she said, “I felt really relieved.” Since then she has received the newer, more effective shingles vaccine, as well as a pneumonia shot, an RSV vaccine to monitor against the respiratory syncytial virus, annual flu shots and all recommended COVID-19 vaccinations.
Some older people want to be vaccinated.
Robin Wolaner, 71, a retired publisher in Sausalito, California, is known to Badger Friends who postponed recommended photos and send them relevant medical studies. “I am a kind of hectoring,” she acknowledged.
Deana Hendrickson, 66, who offers daily care for three young grandsons in Los Angeles, sought an extra MMR shot, although she was vaccinated as a child against measles, mumps and rubella, in case her immunity for measles had been taken.
For older adults who express more confidence in the safety of vaccine than younger groups, welcome research has been conducted in recent months. Studies have found important benefits of a new vaccine and improved versions of older ones, and one vaccine can provide a large bonus that no one provided for.
The new studies come at a loaded political moment. The health secretary of the nation, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has long discredited certain vaccines and calls them unsafe and says that the government officials they regulate are compromised and corrupt.
On June 9, Kennedy shot a panel of scientific advisers on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and later replaced them with some who have been skeptical about vaccines. But so far, Kennedy has not tried to curb access to the shots for older Americans.
The proof that vaccines are favorable remains overwhelming.
The expression “vaccines Not just for children more‘Has become a favorite for William Schaffner, a specialist in infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
“The population older than 65, which often has the worst impact of breathing viruses and others, now has the advantage of vaccines that can prevent much of that serious illness,” he said.
Take Influenza, which sends from 140,000 to 710,000 people to hospitals every year, most of them seniors, and is fatal to 10% of the older adults admitted to the hospital.
For about 15 years, the CDC has approved various improved flu vaccines for people aged 65 and older. More effective than the standard formulation, they include either higher levels of the antigen that builds protection against the virus or absorb an adjuvans that creates a stronger immune response. Or they are recombinant vaccines, developed through a different method, with higher antigen mirrors.
In a meta-analysis in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, “all improved vaccine products were superior to the standard dose for the prevention of hospital admissions,” said Rebecca Morgan, a methodologist for health research on the Western Reserve University case and an author of the study.
Compared to the standard flu shot, the Improved vaccines reduced the risk of hospitalization From the flu in older adults, with at least 11% and up to 18%. The CDC advises Adults aged 65 and older to receive the improved vaccinesLike many already do.
More good news: vaccines to prevent the respiratory syncytial virus in people aged 60 and older perform admirable.
RSV is the most common cause of hospitalization for infants, and it also forms significant risks for the elderly. “Season in and season,” said Schaffner, “it produces outbreaks of serious respiratory diseases that influenza rivals.”
Because the FDA approved an RSV vaccine for the first time in 2023, the 2023-24 season “offered the first opportunity to see it in a real-world context,” said Pauline Terebuh, an epidemiologist at the Western Reserve School of Medicine and an author of a Recent Study Open in the Jama Network magazine.
When analyzing electronic health files for nearly 800,000 patients, the researchers found that the vaccines 75% were effective against acute infection, which means that disease that was serious enough to send a patient to a healthcare provider.
The vaccines were 75% effective in preventing emergency department or emergency care visits, and 75% effective against hospitalization, both with those from 60 to 74 years old and older.
Immuungecompromitated patients, even though they have a slightly lower level of protection against the vaccine, will also benefit from it, Terebuh said. Regarding side effects, the study found a very low risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare condition that causes muscle weakness and usually follows an infection, in approximately 11 cases per doses of vaccin. That, she said, “should not discourage people.”
The CDC now recommends RSV vaccination for people aged 75 and older, and for those 60 to 74 if they have a higher risk of serious illness (for example, heart conditions).
As the data from the 2024-25 season becomes available, researchers hope to determine whether the vaccine remains a one-and-day, or whether immunity requires repeated vaccination.
People 65 and higher express the greatest confidence in the safety of every adult group, a KFF survey in April. More than 80% said that they were ‘very’ or ‘somewhat confident’ about MMR, shingles, pneumonia and flu shots.
Although the COVID vaccine received lower support from all adults, more than two-thirds of the older adults expressed faith in its safety.
Even skeptics can become enthusiastic about a possible advantage of the shingles vaccine: this spring, Stanford researchers reported that vaccination against shingles for seven years of vaccination Reduced the risk of dementia by 20%A finding that made newspaper heads.
Prejudices often undermine observational studies that compare vaccinated with non -vaccinated groups. “People who are motivated healthier and more health are those who are being vaccinated,” said Pascal Geldetzer, an epidemiologist at the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience at Stanford and the main author of the study.
“It’s hard to know if this is the cause and effect,” he said, “or whether they have less chance of developing dementia.”
So the Stanford team benefited from a “natural experiment” when the first shingles vaccine, Zostavax, was introduced in Wales. Health officials have established a strict end to the age: people who were 80 on or before 1 September 2013 did not qualify for vaccination, but who even were eligible for a little younger.
In the sample of nearly 300,000 adults whose birthdays fell close to both sides of that date, almost half of the eligible group received the vaccine, but almost no one in the older group did.
“Just like in a randomized study, these comparison groups must be comparable in all possible ways,” explained Geldsetzer. A substantial reduction of dementia diagnoses in the vaccine-intelligent group, with a much stronger protective effect in women, is therefore “more powerful and more convincing evidence,” he said.
The team also found reduced dementia rates after shingles vaccacins were Introduced in Australia And other countries. “We keep seeing this in one data set after the other,” said GeldensTzer.
In the United States, where a more powerful vaccine, Shingrix, became available in 2017 and replaced Zostavax, Oxford researchers found An even stronger effect.
By matching nearly 104,000 older Americans who received a first dose of the new vaccine (full immunization requires two) with a group that had received the earlier formulation, they found delayed start of dementia in the Shingrix group.
How a shingles vaccine can reduce dementia remains inexplicable. Scientists have suggested that viruses can contribute to dementia themselves, so suppressing them could protect the brain. Perhaps the vaccine gives the immune system in general or influences inflammation.
“I don’t think anyone knows,” said Paul Harrison, a psychiatrist in Oxford and a senior author of the study. But he added: “I am now convinced that there is something real here.”
Shingrix, now recommended for adults older than 50, is 90% effective When preventing shingles and the persistent nerve pain that can arise. However, in 2021, however Only 41% of adults aged 60 and older Had received a dose from both shingles vaccine.
A connection with dementia requires further research and Voeldetzer tries to increase philanthropic financing for a clinical test.
And “if you needed another reason to get this vaccine,” said Schaffner, “here it is.”
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