People are rushing to their local pharmacy or doctor’s office this month to get their COVID and flu vaccines. Those over 65 are also probably considering the shingles, RSV, and pneumonia vaccines. But what a lot of these health-conscious folks may not realize is that their vaccine diligence could also be helping them stave off cognitive decline. That’s because several new studies have tied four common vaccines to a lower risk of dementia.
RELATED: If You’re Getting Older, This Supplement Can Protect Against Dementia, Researchers Discover.
How do vaccines lower dementia risk?
In a 2024 interview with The Washington Post, Keenan Walker, a senior investigator and the director of the Multimodal Imaging of Neurodegenerative Disease Unit at the National Institute on Aging, explained that severe infections in the body can lead to brain atrophy, or an accelerated loss of brain volume. This, in turn, can cause cognitive decline.
In a more recent piece in The Washington Post, Avram Bukhbinder, a resident physician at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital, built on this well-supported hypothesis: “We think it’s the uncontrolled kind of systemic inflammation that’s probably contributing to that. And it’s very likely that they had the underlying Alzheimer’s or other dementia pathology already, but the inflammation is what pushed them over the edge.”
Therefore, vaccinating yourself against these infections can lower the risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia. As The Post points out in its Sept. 2025 article, there are currently four vaccines that research shows can protect your brain.
RELATED: Doctors Warn These 5 “Healthy” Habits May Be Silently Harming Your Brain.
1. The flu shot
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for the 2024-25 respiratory virus season, approximately 47 percent of U.S. adults received a flu vaccination, similar to the rate in previous years. This leaves more than half the population vulnerable to an infection that kills close to 30,000 people each year.
However, failing to get a flu shot could also harm your brain health and/or lead to pneumonia.
A 2023 study published in the journal Neuron analyzed the health data of nearly 400,000 people from the Finnish biobank FinnGen and the U.K. biobank. They concluded that influenza with pneumonia was “significantly associated” with an increased risk of five neurodegenerative diseases: Dementia, vascular dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
However, a 2022 study conducted by Bukhbinder and fellow researchers found that adults over age 65 who received a flu vaccine were about 40 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s. They arrived at their findings after studying the health data of more than 1.8 million adults.
Likewise, a 2024 study that included 71,000 participants concluded that the flu shot was linked to a 21 percent lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and, more specifically, a 42 percent lower risk of developing vascular dementia (a type of dementia caused by damage to the blood vessels in the brain).
2. The RSV vaccine
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is an infection of the lungs and respiratory tract. Babies, adults over 65, and those with compromised immune systems are among the groups at a higher risk of contracting the virus. Typically, RSV causes cold-like symptoms, but it can spread to the lower respiratory tract, where it can cause bronchiolitis or pneumonia.
In 2023, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first RSV vaccine. And as The Post points out, a June 2025 study has already found that it “was associated with a reduced risk of dementia over 18 months compared with those who received the flu vaccine.”
RELATED: Doctors Warn This Common Medication May Be Linked to Dementia Risk.
3. The shingles vaccine
The same June 2025 study concluded that the shingles vaccine was associated with a reduced risk of dementia. Both it and the RSV vaccine contain an ingredient called AS01, which helps boost the body’s immune response to the viruses. However, the researchers theorize that AS01 may also protect the brain from inflammation.
In fact, a separate 2025 study found that “those who received the shingles vaccine Zostavax (an older version than what’s currently offered today) were 20 percent less likely to develop dementia within the next seven years than those who didn’t get the shot,” as Best Life reported at the time.
“Plus, the researchers found that this reduced risk was stronger in women than men,” Best Life explained. “This could be because of the differences in which dementia develops in women versus men and the fact that women generally have stronger immune responses to vaccines.”
Moreover, additional studies have shown significant decreases in the risk of heart attack and stroke after receiving newer versions of the shingles vaccine.
The CDC recommends that all adults age 50 and over get vaccinated against shingles. However, their most recent data from 2019 shows that only 26 percent of this age group received the vaccine.
4. The Tdap vaccine
The final vaccine that The Washington Post reports to be associated with a reduced risk of dementia is the Tdap vaccine, which protects against tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (whooping cough).
According to a 2021 study of adults over age 65, those who received both the shingles vaccine and the Tdap vaccine had a 42 to 50 percent lower risk of developing dementia compared to those who got no vaccines.
As with all vaccinations, speak with your healthcare provider about what is best for you.
Source link
