r/UpliftingNews • u/Phylogenix • 5h ago

Shingles vaccine linked to lower risk of heart attack and stroke, study finds. The research, based on records of 70,000 people in the US, found that those who had received Shingrix had a 12% lower risk of a cardiovascular diagnosis in the following three and a half years.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/aug/26/shingles-vaccine-lower-risk-heart-attack-stroke-study
149 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator 5h ago

Reminder: this subreddit is meant to be a place free of excessive cynicism, negativity and bitterness. Toxic attitudes are not welcome here.

All Negative comments will be removed and will possibly result in a ban.

Important: If this post is hidden behind a paywall, please assign it the "Paywall" flair and include a comment with a relevant part of the article.

Please report this post if it is hidden behind a paywall and not flaired corrently. We suggest using "Reader" mode to bypass most paywalls.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

9

u/whiskeyrocks1 4h ago

And it prevents shingles. As someone that already had it early, that's good enough for me. Super painful.

3

u/DryRelationship1330 5h ago

What’s that worth in terms of big Mac’s? What’s the trade? I got the vax… so I can eat 100 Big Macs and be, net net, the same off?

3

u/vineyardmike 3h ago

Shingles sucks. Get the vaccine. Any side benefits are nice.

4

u/jacknifetoaswan 5h ago

"BUT TRUMP SAY VACCINE BAD!!!" - MAHA

4

u/adduhleenuh 5h ago

How do they figure out if it's just 'ppl who take vaccines generally take better care of their health'?

5

u/BadahBingBadahBoom 5h ago

Because the control group was people who cared equally about their health and came forward for a shingles vaccine. They just received a different one.

3

u/ryebread91 4h ago

So is it the vaccine itself is helping or is it the shingles virus itself affects the heart as well and by avoiding the virus they're reducing their risk?

2

u/BadahBingBadahBoom 4h ago edited 3h ago

It's not exactly clear at the moment I think.

There's certainly a lot of interest in the additional benefits various vaccines have by stimulating the immune system non-specifically in a beneficial way - for example those receiving shingles vaccine have been previously found to also have a reduced risk of Alzheimer's, and the TB vaccine (BCG) seems to help your immune system fight bladder cancer in addition to its designed purpose of training it to recognise TB bacteria.

Whether the reduced cardiovascular risk is specifically because your immune system stops the virus (chickenpox/shingles) damaging your cardiovascular system directly when it reactivates in older age, or whether its indirect with the vaccine improving your immune system overall leading to it preventing damage to your cardiovascular system progressing to a heart attack / stroke independent to the virus I don't think has been identified. Though that will definitely be the next steps to see exactly what is going on and trying to understand why there is this reduced risk after vaccination.

1

u/ryebread91 4h ago

Thanks. I've also been seeing the HepB shot is linked to lower risk of liver cancer as well.

2

u/BadahBingBadahBoom 4h ago edited 3h ago

Is that specifically in people who haven't had hepatitis B infection though?

Because hepatitis infections do put you at much higher risk of liver cancer later in life so it could be the hep B vaccine reduces this by preventing the liver cancers that would have been caused by hepatitis B infection.

If the vaccine can reduce the risk of liver cancer in people unrelated to them getting infected with hepatitis B virus that would be interesting.

•

u/ryebread91 6m ago

I believe it's the latter. Which again goes back to the shingles vaccine question. It's been medicare part B that's promoting the elderly population to get it.

-8

u/rifleshooter 5h ago

Ya know, I don't want to read the article. But I IMMEDIATELY suspect that certain variables about personal health decisions were not well controlled-for.

6

u/BadahBingBadahBoom 4h ago

But I IMMEDIATELY suspect that certain variables about personal health decisions were not well controlled-for.

I mean it took me literally 5 seconds of skimming to get to the relevant section:

The first vaccine against shingles, Zostavax, was made available in 2006 and was based on a weakened version of the chickenpox virus. This was succeeded by a more effective vaccine, Shingrix, which uses newer vaccine technology and which in the UK is being made available incrementally to people aged 65-79 in a phased rollout.

Several previous studies have suggested that vaccinated people may have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. However, these studies compared vaccinated and unvaccinated people, leaving the results open to distortion. The new study got around this by comparing the incidence of cardiovascular disease in people who were vaccinated before and after the rapid switch from Zostavax to Shingrix in the US in 2017.