Flu vaccine linked to lower rate of Alzheimer’s disease

Story at a glance

• New research from the McGovern Medical School of UTHealth Houston has found a link between the influenza vaccination and reduced chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

• Researchers compared rates of patients developing the disease to a sample size of 1 million U.S. adults 65 years old and older.

• Researchers found that those who had received at least one dose of the vaccine had a 40 percent reduced chance of development of the disease.

Researchers have made a connection between receiving a flu vaccine and a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Avram Bukhbinder, an alum of the McGovern Medical School of UTHealth Houston, and Paul E. Schulz, professor of Neurology at McGovern Medical School, compared the risk of developing the disease in patients who had received and not gotten a flu vaccination the year prior with a sample of over 1 million adults in the United States over the age of 65.

As a result, the pair were able to find that those who had received at least one flu vaccination within the past year were 40 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease compared to those who were unvaccinated.

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“We found that flu vaccination in older adults reduces the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease for several years. The strength of this protective effect increased with the number of years that a person received an annual flu vaccine — in other words, the rate of developing Alzheimer’s was lowest among those who consistently received the flu vaccine every year,” said Bukhbinder in a statement.

“Future research should assess whether flu vaccination is also associated with the rate of symptom progression in patients who already have Alzheimer’s dementia.”

During four-year follows, just over 5 percent of flu-vaccinated patients developed Alzheimer’s while 8.5 percent of non-vaccinated patients had developed the illness.

The reason behind the link needs further study, the researchers said. But past studies have found connection between a lowered risk for dementia and exposure to different adulthood vaccinations like the pneumonia, polio, herpes and tetanus vaccines.

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