This has been the standard of care ever since the vaccine became available in the 90s (US). The origin of the "parties" was that first-time chickenpox was perceived to be less harmful in children than adults prior to the vaccine, so you wanted to make sure people's first exposure wasn't in adulthood.
The idea being that it's better for people to get it as kids, because if you give them vaccines as kids you'll have to give them boosters as adults. Whereas a latent disease will provide a lifetime of immunity.
Adults vaccinated against chickenpox do not need boosters as adults.
If you had an overwhelming chance of getting chicken pox, getting it in early school age reasonably seemed to be the best option.
We do in the US. I was kind of surprised when my now 2 and 4 year olds were vaccinated against Chickenpox, since I remember doing the Chickenpox party thing myself when I was younger (staying home with some friends over, playing Daytona USA on my Sega Saturn, I think?).
For now. The current administration is chipping away at child vaccines, just today removing Hep B vaccine from the recommendations list. AFAICT you can still choose to get it for your kid, and insurance should still cover it, but I won't be the least bit surprised if before 2028 some of these vaccines are actually banned outright.
To regain control of both houses with enough margins to ensure impeachment & conviction would be an incredible swing. I just don't see it happening.
Texas just got its redrawn maps approved by SCOTUS. I'm still expecting SCOTUS to reject California's though when that case comes to them. The court will do its part in keeping the GOP in power.
But while I agree that there's a chance, I think it's vanishingly small. I do hope that the dems can take the house in the midterms and put the brakes on the massive expansion in executive power.
It was like a badge of honor.
They hide from the immune system inside nerves or other immune cells, and seem to have a lot of weird associations with other issues over our lifetime, particularly neurological and immune problems.
It wouldn't surprise me if it turns out all these tie back to immune dysregulation and are just triggered by different viruses in different people.
ETA: Since someone downvoted this: I'm not criticizing vaccination, and you should absolutely get your kids vaccinated! But for someone (like me) at the age where you've seen friends with Shingles (ugh), adding live chickenpox virus to your body feels like a risky idea, even before this news.
Here’s a study that looks good:
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/226/Supplement_4/S470/6...
The headline conclusion is:
> Latent VZV can be wild-type VZV (wt-VZV) from natural infection, vaccine-strain VZV (vs-VZV) from immunization with live attenuated vaccine, or both. Based on available data in children and adolescents, the risk of HZ from vs-VZV appears to be approximately 80% lower than the risk from wt-VZV, with a lower incidence found in 2-dose as compared to 1-dose vaccine recipients [9, 10].
A major caveat is that the relevant age groups were very much too young for shingles vaccines at the time the study was published.
I had to argue with my doctor to prescribe the Shingles vaccine at 49. And when I had it in my 30s, nobody even bothered to give me any antivirals, which did exist at the time, or nerve pain relief.
After I had the shingles vaccine, nerve pain that I'd been suffering with every time I got the slightest little allergy or cold suddenly disappeared, and I haven't had it since more than a year later.
If you are under 50 years old, and had chickenpox, and especially if you've had one outbreak of shingles, force your doctors to prescribe the vaccine. It costs $100-$200 without insurance coverage, and it is worth it.
I wasn't aware the shingles vaccine starves off nerve pain. I've noticed more nerve pain with pins and needles and neuropathy now that I'm 41 which I assume is what you are talking about. I used to think I was getting pre-diabetic before this as I wasn't aware of nerve flare ups being a thing given how young I was when I found out.
Has there not been any studies around this with those with shingles taking the vaccine and freeing them from their symptoms? First time I've heard this.
After my 43 y/o sister-in-law had a debilitating shingles outbreak last year I asked my PCP about the vaccine. He stated that he was wary to prescribe it to be. His reasoning was something like:
There was a previous shingles vaccine that didn't work very well. It was found that it didn't offer long-term protection and the protection could not be improved with a booster. The current vaccine is still new and the long-term protection and ability to be extended by a booster are unknown. Since most of the worst outcomes of shingles correlate to old age it makes sense to defer the vaccination hedging against the failure of the vaccine to provide long-term protection and to allow more time to elapse to learn more about how the vaccine works long-term.
Edit: My PCP's general advice was to defer the vaccination as long as possible. He felt that 60 was reasonable.
I haven't looked into the veracity of any of his reasoning, but I am willing defer to his expertise and bide my time. My sister-in-law had a really bad experience, and I remember my grandfather having a terrible experience when I was a child. I'm definitely fearful and would like to prevent it.
Especially when the delta is less than one year. That's just quibbling.
The age restriction seems obnoxious to me, too. I'd love to gather criticisms of this reasoning with citations that I can take to my PCP. It gives me the willies rolling the dice with this. I would much rather get the vaccination now but I also see his point. (I'm entirely too much the layman to go out looking for studies about the long-term protection of this current vaccine.)
re: the delta - He was advising me to defer the vaccination as long as possible. I'll edit my note to reflect that. Quibbling about a year is silly. He advised waiting until at least 60.
I'm 2 out of 3, any info on that scenario?
Reputation is hard to build and easy to break, and well every decade there are enough events to break it even before dealing with propagandists and lumping all experts into the same basket. The experts said there were WMDs in Iraq too. Increased transparency combined with a less than stellar history means that institutions have fully earned their cynical reception. Horrifyingly is the damage that such misconduct has wrought, as even when they are actually 100% right this time people have reasons to doubt them.
This is inaccurate. I know several people who got it younger than that after contracting shingles and recovering.
Also, I would like to point out that having shingles was possibly the single most physically unpleasant experience of my life and boy it sure would have been fantastic to have been able to get the shingles vaccine before I got shingles, as opposed to sometime after! because wow, having shingles sucks.
But the pharmacies are still reluctant to administer it. My doctor prescribed it for me but when I got to the pharmacy they made me fill out some forms... because I checked the box that said I had no serious health issues and I was under 50, the pharmacist absolutely refused to administer it even with a prescription.
I've recently had shingles and, let me tell you, it sucks ass. I thought my liver was going to explode.
I'll be getting the shingles vaccine as soon as possible.
A lack of oral hygiene and gum disease is associated with nerodegeneration.
Lots of metabolic diseases have associations with nerodegenerative disorders. Insulin, kidney, liver dysfunction.
The gut microbiome...
Putting immune or metabolic stress on the brain can cause it to go into this disease state death spiral.
It's important to remember that association/correlation is not causality. People who brush their teeth reliably are probably more likely to exercise and do other healthy behaviors, too (avoid smoking, ...).
In particular this can seriously impair microglial cells which is something you really don't want to have happen if you value maintaining a well functioning brain.
This gives researchers (the lab kind) something to investigate.
I respect this kind of science a lot more than statistical paper pushing.
There's a reason why this finding is valuable. It suggests a mechanistic hypothesis that bacteria are entering the bloodstream, heart, and passing the blood-brain barrier.
This is a very valuable line of investigation that can lead to a smoking gun for one class of casual mechanisms and potentially to preventative care or treatment.
If we blindly follow just the statistics, we'd never get any real science done.
Correlation does not imply causation. But when it gives you something to investigate, don't sit on it.
I’ve had chicken pox, mumps and measles growing up. Everyone I grew up with had those. No one is experiencing dementia or any sort of neurodegeneration. There was a chicken pox epidemic in my engineering university dorm. I didn’t catch it since I had it earlier as a kid. Either way none of the people who had it are having issues.
I think take the vax to prevent the disease. The neurodegenerative side effects are just advertisement for the vaccine.
Keep in mind I’m not saying don’t take the vaccine. I’m just saying I don’t believe that these second order effects are as prevalent as they’re made out to be
Are you asserting dementia and neurodegeneration don't exist in India, or merely not in your set of close personal acquantances? Because if its the latter, that... hardly means anything. The expected prevalence even with a past history of diseases that increase the risk isn’t high enough that it not happening that you are aware of in your personal circle is... really noteworthy at all, unless your circle is large and/or you have detailed access to the private medical information of everyone in it.
I mean chicken pox was pretty rampant. Everyone I knew got it - I mean everyone at some point before becoming an adult. It was just a rite of passage.
Measles specifically cause lifelong disabilities, so yes, people do actually suffer those.
So there might need to be more studies into shingles and why men are getting it more frequently and younger.
If the vaccine became available in the 90s, and it was given to kids mostly, those people are 40 at most now, so how is the increase in shingles measured? More cases when younger? More older people getting it?
Thinking about it within this context doesn't make much sense.
So this is why earlier in the thread they said, less wild chicken pox, more shingles, because immune system goes stupid as there is no wild chicken pox?
I had chicken pox as a kid, the vaccine became available in my country in 98, several years after, so it seems I'm screwed for shingles.
I'm pretty sure I got is because of stress. I quit my job, sold my home and all my stuff to travel for a year. I was awarded shingles the week after handing in my resignation.
Pro tip: keep some cold sore oral medicine at hand.
I didn't know there's a vaccine. Nobody in healthcare here in Finland has mentioned it, so maybe it's not on offer.
Looking to find out more about the vaccine and it's impacts on existing shingle victims.
I'm told that stress can cause shingles to flare up, in that stress also suppresses the immune system, and both my friend and I were going through one of the most stressful phases of our lives at the time, so I always chalked it up to that. Not a very strong hypothesis, though.
I got the shingles vaccine last year.
How old are you now? Did th vaccine help your symptoms?
Being familiar with the prodrome and early symptoms, I was able to get treatment way sooner than I did the first time. Between that and perhaps having a more primed immune system, this second encounter was far shorter and less intense.
Still not fun, and I'm hoping it'll earn me early access to the vaccine, but I'm more optimistic about it being muted if that doesn't happen and it comes back a third time.
Shingles sucked lol, definitely not a great time.
(I had shingles in my 20s; it sucks; I got shingrix in my 30s by Rx.)
Huh. Well that's good to know. I got the shot in April, but unless I am already getting very forgetful, my doctor did not mention a second shot. And I haven't gotten any calls from them about it (they are normally proactive about the routine things, so this is a little bit of a surprise).
So if it's always a two-shot regimen, I need the second one ASAP. It's almost 8 months now since I got the first one. Thanks to you I just sent my doc a note to find out.
I understand the argument and it makes sense on paper, but this doesn't seem to be a general sentiment.
my mom (who passed before shingrex) got a bad case in one eye and went blind in that eye.
so nice that kids have been getting the chickenpox vaccine for a while now and shouldn't have to deal much with shingles as the age.
I didn't know this and now after having shingles I have postherpetic neuralgia and am cursed with chronic pain for the rest of my life. It's not bad enough to check out, but it certainly isn't fun.
"To provide causal as opposed to correlational evidence, we take advantage of the fact that, in Wales, eligibility for the zoster vaccine was determined on the basis of an individual’s exact date of birth. Those born before 2 September 1933 were ineligible and remained ineligible for life, whereas those born on or after 2 September 1933 were eligible for at least 1 year to receive the vaccine."
Eyting, M., Xie, M., Michalik, F. et al. A natural experiment on the effect of herpes zoster vaccination on dementia. Nature 641, 438–446 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08800-x
There are no dementia statistics versus vaccination for that demographic because vaccination started about 1995.
There is also a relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1950/
If you are thinking that dementia is caused by shingles, then also consider that shingles is caused by chickenpox.
not an antivaxx community, people got MMR and HPV and tetanus vaxx. this was normalworld suburban britain. I didn't even know there was a chickenpox vaxx until now.
Over the last few years we have been discovering many diseases are secondary complications from viral infections, such as the linked study, or Multiple Sclerosis due to Epstein-Barr virus.
Perhaps that has rebalanced the cost/benefit analysis of some vaccines?
A childhood vaccine that prevents a percentage of dementia cases would be amazing!
I caught chickenpox as an young adult in the US. Recently paid NZ$700 to have shingles vaccination privately (NZ provides it free at 65; however I know many people that have had a hideous time dealing with shingles and I'd like to avoid that).
(Got both of my kids (5&7) vaccinated privately. Don't regret it at all.)
what the fuck. why?
god damn I hate rNHS national cult. better get myself vaxxed to undo this idiocy.
1) That people who couldn't be vaccinated would get the virus later in life (because it would be less common), when it's a much more serious illness.
2) That there was a protective effect against shingles from having people regularly encounter the disease by encountering children with chicken pox.
But it turns out that the latter isn't actually an issue.
are there more vaccines they're hiding from us?
It's possible to find someone who would write a prescription for it anyway, as with many off label prescriptions with low perceived risk of harm, but insurance is unlikely to cover it.
Many/most doctors won't do that, though, especially without at least some kind of specific reason (like having recurrent cases already).
But there's a whole "evidence based medicine" thing that many of us usually try to champion, and it turns out the collecting such evidence is something expensive and priority-constrained. Due to lack of suitably targeted studies, there's just not formal evidence that the vaccine will be effective or lasting for us, or on what risks might apply to younger people with more robust immune systems.
There's also just a consideration about rationing the drug itself (it's seen shortages), and so prioritizing availability to more at-risk populations is not totally unreasonable.
All that said, it's not like it's impossible or illegal to get. You just need to find a prescriber who'll sign off for it (they exist), and you might need to pay cash rate for it at the pharmacy.
Prioritizing drugs in the event of shortages is totally understandable, though pretty easily fixable if you give the manufacturers time to plan for general availability (hopefully they would see it as an opportunity to make money by broadening market share, not an opportunity to make money by restricting supply).
We don't know the side effects or the beneficial effects since it hasn't been studied/approved for that (we likely have studied it, but not with enough rigor for FDA approval). It is, in all likelihood, fine, but when it comes to medication, we typically want a study rather than a guess.
Early on there were also arguments that supply was limited, so the age minimum was to restrict supply to those who could benefit the most (frail elderly). But that ship has long sailed.
Background to the question is providers here seem to be switching to Shingrix for (claimed) higher effectiveness against shingles, but there's at least some suggestion that Shingix is not live (attenuated) virus...
> The shingles vaccine now in widespread use (Shingrix) has more of an effect than the previous one (Zostavax). A key difference between these vaccines is that Shingrix contains an ‘adjuvant’, an ingredient designed to enhance the vaccine’s effect. It is therefore possible that the adjuvant contributes to Shingrix’ greater effect than Zostavax on reducing dementia.
Did a blood antibody test, for some reason, no rubella anti-bodies. Will get that + dTap (9 years old, need tetanus booster soon anyway) before they outlaw them..
(I just had my first shingles vaccine 2 weeks ago)
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2025/03/shingles-vacc...
"The remarkable findings, published April 2 in Nature, support an emerging theory that viruses that affect the nervous system can increase the risk of dementia. If further confirmed, the new findings suggest that a preventive intervention for dementia is already close at hand."
https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/antiviral-treatment-fail...
And WTF is wrong with wearing a Band-Aid? You're criticizing someone for wearing a f**ing Band-Aid!?* Are you nuts?! [pounds desk] Whassamattayou? Can't you stick to the point instead of talking about f**ing Band-Aids?*
Our skulls are hard for a reason. Brains are sensitive.
But the leading form of dementia is Alzheimer's. Somewhere in the order of 40% of us are expected to get Alzheimer's before we die. The list of things that have been demonstrated to cause Alzheimer's is much, much shorter.
For the last 40 years, the leading theory about Alzheimer's is that it is caused by the beta-amyloid plaques that are found in the brain after death. This theory has produced exactly zero treatments that meaningfully affect clinical symptoms, despite many drug trial and literally billions in research per year. Seriously, between various sources, we've spent something like a quarter of what it cost to put man on the Moon. (It is hard to make a precise comparison, because a lot of that funding was private.)
This single study represents more progress on effective treatments of Alzheimer's than all of that work combined. The importance of the result should not be dismissed.
https://www.alzheimers.gov/news/no-association-viagra-and-ci...
Top defense.
Chickenpox is actually a neurological disease; that's how it re-emerges as shingles later in life. The virus infects nerve cells but (as far as we know) hides out in them without damaging them. Because nerves are critical to bodily function and don't regenerate nearly as efficiently as (for example) skin, liver, or other "sheet tissues" (tissue made of small cells is easier to regenerate; nerves can be as long as a meter and regeneration involves growing a new cell that entire distance), the body has a pile of immunosuppressant signals to prevent killing the nerve while trying to fight an infection. "Hey white blood cells: I know we hate chickenpox, but we hate not being able to swallow more, so maybe lay off the throat nerves, right?"
... but as a result, one doesn't generally purge the chickenpox infection after it occurs. Breakouts into other tissue are swiftly suppressed by our immune systems our whole lives (so swiftly that you don't get symptoms or become contagious), but as we age and the immune system weakens, a breakout can become a full infection and the result is shingles.
... and now, it seems that the "infects nerves without damaging them" hypothesis should be up for question.
My comments in brackets.
- Herpes zoster vaccination reduced dementia diagnosis in our prior natural experiments. [Previous work. I’m familiar with the Wales experiment where they had a sharp age cutoff for getting the vaccine in their national health system. Comparing those just below and just beyond the cutoff allows for analysis similar to a randomized controlled trial (aka ‘natural experiment’). The results showed a ~20% decrease in dementia due to vaccine, so the results were already pretty strong.]
- Here, we find a lower occurrence of MCI and dementia deaths among dementia patients [MCI = ‘mild cognitive impairment’. This is a more refined result than prior work, harder to see in the data than a clear dementia diagnosis.]
- Herpes zoster vaccination appears to act along the entire clinical course of dementia. [This is not surprising given the earlier results, but the demonstration is harder, and it may lead to recommendations for earlier HZ vaccination, IIRC currently at 50 or 55 in the US.]
- This study’s approach avoids the common confounding concerns of observational data [Basically they are improving their methods and getting stronger results, classic good science.]
Shingrix had a potential side effect of Guillain-Barre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillain–Barré_syndrome#Vaccin...
It's interesting that the linked article references, in different terms, the distinction, obliquely. Zostavax is attentuated; Shingrix recombinant.
"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."
> Recent studies have shown convincingly that vaccines against shingles (Herpes zoster) reduce the risk of dementia. The shingles vaccine now in widespread use (Shingrix) has more of an effect than the previous one (Zostavax). A key difference between these vaccines is that Shingrix contains an ‘adjuvant’, an ingredient designed to enhance the vaccine’s effect. It is therefore possible that the adjuvant contributes to Shingrix’ greater effect than Zostavax on reducing dementia.
Link to study https://www.nature.com/articles/s41541-025-01172-3
I don't know if this study changes the conclusion that Shingrix is more affective than Zostavax.
This study was possible due to a "natural experiment" where one country gave people from a very specific birth date the vaccine (so people born right before and right after that date were very similar, except for the vaccine).
It's not clear why this is the case. It might be that the virus the vaccine supresses plays a role in dementia development, or it might be that the vaccine causes an immune response that has other indirect positive impacts.
There are multiple causes for dementia. If I read figure 2 right, the vaccine slightly reduces the chance of mild cognitive impairment, but cuts the chances of dying from dementia by about a third(!)
Also interesting: The vaccine helps at different phases of disease progression.
The simplest explanation is that dementia is due to cumulative damage, not a single event, and that getting shingles is a big hit.
The vaccine probably prevents dementia in the same way staying out of planes makes you invulnerable to parachute failures.
MCI = mild cognitive impairment
What's interesting to me is that the effect doesn't appear to be specific to Alzheimer's--rather they see a reduction in all forms of dementia diagnosis.
I suspect the thinking is something along the lines of ... dementia is either caused or heavily influenced by inflammation. Reactivation of HZ virus causes neurological inflammation. So, HZ vaccination is gonna prevent some forms of inflammation and help you avoid dementia--a little bit.
FWIW, I'm trained as a molecular biologist and have a some knowledge of clinical trials, dementia, etc., but I am far from an expert on this.
In case you've never seen the guidelines, you're discouraged from talking about downvotes: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We should be vaccinating kids against all of them rather than sending them to Chickenpox parties.