Shingles vaccine protects against shingles, slows biological aging

The shingles vaccine may do more than just protect the body against shingles; it may also slow biological aging in older adults, according to a recent study done by researchers at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, published in The Journals of Gerontology Series A.

Jung Ki Kim, Ph.D., Research Associate Professor of Gerontology, and Eileen Crimmins, Ph.D., USC University Professor and AARP Professor of Gerontology, used data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study to study several aspects of biological aging in more than 3,800 study participants who were at least 70 years old in 2016. The domains they tested were

• inflammation
• innate immunity
• adaptive immunity
• cardiovascular hemodynamics
• neurodegeneration
• epigenetic aging
• transcriptomic aging

The participants’ biological ages were calculated from:

• venous blood
• flow cytometry
• physical assessments

Kim and Crimmins found that patients who received the shingles vaccine were biologically younger than patients who did not receive the vaccine, with the most pronounced effects noted within three years after vaccination.

Biological aging refers to how the body changes over time, whereas chronological aging is defined by the actual age of the body. For example, in two people who are both 70 years old, one may be showing more signs of aging than the other. Biological age can be affected by lifestyle factors such as diet and exercise, environmental factors such as socioeconomic status or biological factors including genetics or chronic illness.

An interest in the hypothetical connection between vaccines and aging is not a new idea. A study published last April in Nature found that the shingles vaccine reduced the probability of a new dementia diagnosis by approximately 20% over a follow-up period of seven years.

In the United States, approximately 1 in 3 adults over the age of 50 will develop shingles in their lifetime, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Shingles is a painful, itchy rash that can be accompanied by fever, headache, chills and an upset stomach. It is caused by the varicella-zoster virus, the same virus that causes chickenpox, which approximately 99% of adults born before the year 1980 have had. After someone has had chickenpox, it lies dormant in their system, reemerging as shingles. Long-term nerve pain is the most common complication, occurring in between 10% and 18% of patients.

Chronic, low-level inflammation associated with age, also known as “inflammaging,” affects approximately 35% of adults in the United States. It is present in many age-related complications such as heart disease, arthritis and cognitive decline.

“The results support the hypothesis that shingles vaccination may influence key biological systems relevant to aging, though effects appear domain-specific and vary over time,” Kim and Crimmins write in the study. “Longitudinal studies are needed to confirm these patterns and explore implications for long-term health. This study adds to emerging evidence that vaccines could play a role in strategies to promote healthy aging by modulating biological systems beyond infection prevention.”

The CDC currently recommends all adults over the age of 50 and immunocompromised adults 18 and older receive a shingles vaccine, which consists of two doses, the second given two to six months after the first.