Flu vaccine and its connection to Alzheimer's disease

Researchers have linked getting a flu vaccine to a lower risk of developing Alzheimer's.

Avram Bukhbinder, a graduate of UTHealth Houston's McGovern Medical School, and Paul E. Schulz, a professor of neurology at McGovern Medical School, compared the risk of developing the disease in patients who received a flu shot and those who have not been vaccinated for the year before with a sample of over 1 million adults who are over the age 65 in the United state.

Due to this, the twosome established that those who had received at least one flu shot in the past year had a 40 percent lower risk of developing Alzheimer's than those who had not been vaccinated.

“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 influenza vaccination is also associated with the rate of symptom progression in patients who already have Alzheimer's dementia."

After four years following the time the vaccine was administered, just over 5 percent of patients who were vaccinated against the flu developed Alzheimer's disease, while 8.5 percent of those who were not vaccinated developed the disease.

The reason behind the connection needs further investigation, the researchers said. However, previous studies have found a connection between a reduced risk of dementia and exposure to various adult vaccines, such as pneumonia, polio, herpes, and tetanus vaccines.

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