An elixir for keeping our brains and bodies younger may already be sitting on pharmacy shelves across the United States \u2014 if only we\u2019d take advantage of it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m talking about the shingles vaccine.<\/p>\n
It was invented because, well, shingles<\/a> is a terrible disease. If you ever had chickenpox (like I did), this virus is lurking inside your body already. Shingles is the reactivation of the same varicella zoster virus later in life. It can lead to painful red rashes that last for weeks, and for some people, they will suffer from debilitating nerve pain for the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n The debut of the first shingles shot in 2006<\/a> was a big public health win for that reason alone. But the benefits may be even greater than we realized at the time.<\/p>\n Sign up for the Good Medicine newsletter<\/p>\n Our political wellness landscape has shifted: new leaders, shady science, contradictory advice, broken trust, and overwhelming systems. How is anyone supposed to make sense of it all? Vox\u2019s senior correspondent Dylan Scott<\/a> has been on the health beat for more than a decade, and every week, he\u2019ll wade into sticky debates, answer fair questions, and contextualize what\u2019s happening in American health care policy. Sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Over the past year, there has been a steady<\/a> stream<\/a> of studies<\/a> showing<\/a> that the shingles vaccine doesn\u2019t just stop the painful skin rashes \u2014 it could also stave off dementia and slow our biological aging.<\/p>\n A recent study that tracked specific biomarkers in human samples strengthened the case that there is a genuine cause-and-effect. The science surrounding the shingles vaccine is a new window into how we age and how we might even slow it down. These findings could open doors to powerful new anti-aging, anti-dementia treatments.<\/p>\n But that will require more investment \u2014 and researchers working on these projects told me it\u2019s been surprisingly hard to find the necessary financial support. Just as importantly, we need to get more seniors to take the vaccine: As of now, less than a third of eligible Americans over 50 are getting their shingles jab.<\/p>\n The remarkable anti-aging shingles shot<\/p>\n The first shingles vaccine, released in 2006, decreased<\/a> the risk of shingles by 60 percent and also reduced by two-thirds the risk of long-term nerve pain. Experts said at the time that the shot \u201crepresents a major public health advance.\u201d<\/p>\n But it was only within the last year that the awesome dementia-defeating powers of the shingles vaccine started to come into focus.<\/p>\n Pascal Geldsetzer<\/a>, who researches population health at Stanford University, spotted an opportunity: In 2013, Wales had established new standards for who could receive the shingles vaccine. People who were born before September 2, 1933, were not eligible, and everyone born on that day or after was. There were two large groups of people who were otherwise the same, differing in age by only weeks, except one of them had received the shingles shot and the other had not. It\u2019s about as rigorous a \u201cnatural experiment\u201d as you could hope for. And so a few years ago, Geldsetzer and his co-authors looked back at the country\u2019s comprehensive health records to track what had happened to patients after they received a shingles vaccine (or didn\u2019t).<\/p>\n And the results<\/a>, published in April 2025, were striking: Receiving the shingles vaccine was associated with a 20 percent lower chance of being diagnosed with dementia. Those findings held up to all kinds of veracity checks \u2014 and they were repeated in similar natural experiments in Australia<\/a> and Canada<\/a> (the latter also co-authored by Geldsetzer). A December 2025 study based on the same Welsh data concluded<\/a> that people who already had dementia and received the shingles vaccine saw slower progression of the disease and fewer deaths, suggesting that the shot may be effective in treating dementia, too.<\/p>\n So the circumstantial case for the shingles shot has grown robust \u2014 and now we\u2019re starting to get lab-based research that could explain why this is happening.<\/p>\n A recent study<\/a> analyzed biomarker data from blood samples collected by the US government as part of regular surveys monitoring Americans\u2019 health. Whereas the earlier studies were observational, this was an attempt by scientists to actually see what was happening \u2014 to measure changes in the body at the molecular level. The researchers found that the vaccine was associated with slower overall biological aging, lower inflammation, and less cell damage. The findings fit with what we\u2019re learning about how chronic inflammation may slowly damage the body<\/a> over time, leading to various chronic health problems.<\/p>\n The study did leave one mystery: The biomarkers specifically linked to dementia did not actually decrease. But the authors noted that we\u2019re still figuring out how to understand the relationship between brain biomarkers and disease. It is possible, for example, that less systemic inflammation leads to less dementia without specifically altering the biomarkers that were tracked.<\/p>\n But now money is drying up for vaccine research<\/p>\n The existing research largely focuses on the initial vaccine released. But in 2018, an even better version came on the market.<\/p>\n Shingrix<\/a>, which combined virus proteins with an immunity booster, prevented shingles in more than 90 percent of cases in clinical trials, with similar success in preventing nerve damage. It is now the standard vaccine in the US.<\/p>\n But does Shingrix have the same anti-aging effects? Unfortunately, we just don\u2019t know. We need more research \u2014 and that\u2019s where all this promising news runs into a brick wall.<\/p>\n Ideally, researchers would run randomized clinical trials. But despite these amazing findings, Geldsetzer told me he had been struggling to find financial support to study Shingrix.<\/p>\n \u201cI think to really convince the public health and medical community what we need now is a true clinical trial, a randomized trial on the effect of shingles vaccination for dementia prevention and cognition,\u201d Geldsetzer said. \u201cThere\u2019s little commercial interest. It\u2019s not been easy at all.\u201d<\/p>\n A number of things are working against him and his peers. The initial Welsh research was supported by an NIH grant, but pro-vaccine research does not exactly align with the administration\u2019s priorities<\/a> under US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s leadership. Drug manufacturers have also been pulling out of the vaccine business for years<\/a>, a trend that is getting worse<\/a> under the Trump administration.<\/p>\n There is a bitter irony here.<\/p>\n The shingles vaccine was made possible<\/a> because pharmaceutical companies, philanthropy groups, and national governments invested in a new vaccine platform while searching for a malaria shot, just one of many examples of how scientific investment can pay off in unexpected ways. But now, money is short.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s not miss this tremendous health care opportunity<\/p>\n To maximize the shingles vaccine\u2019s value, we need more research, and we need more people to take it. Vaccination rates are still surprisingly low: Only 30 percent of eligible patients received<\/a> the shingles shot as of 2022.<\/p>\n Lower vaccination rates among men, underrepresented and historically marginalized groups, and lower-income people suggest<\/a> this is partly a health care access issue. (Adding to that evidence: People without chronic conditions are also less likely to get it, probably because they have less contact with the health system.)<\/p>\n But on top of that, we\u2019re now entering a new era of vaccine hesitancy, even among older people. Vaccination rates among seniors for pneumonia and flu have been dropping<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is a big public health test: We seem to have a cheap intervention for aging and cognitive decline.<\/p>\n