Many Older People Embrace Vaccines. Research Is Proving Them Right.

Kim Beckham, an insurance agency in Victoria, Texas, had seen friends suffering so pain of shingles that she wanted to receive the first shingle vaccine approved as soon as he became available, even if she had to pay for this.

Her doctor and several pharmacies refused it because she was below the registered age at the time, which was 60 years. So, in 2016, she celebrated her 60th anniversary in her local CVS.

“I was there when they opened,” recalls Beckham. After turning her zostavax, she said, “I really felt relieved.” Since then, she has received the more recent and more efficient zona vaccine, as well as a pneumonia shooting, an RSV vaccine to protect herself against the respiratory syncytial virus, annual flu vaccines and all recommended COVV-19 vaccinations.

Some elderly people are really impatient to be vaccinated.

Robin Wolaner, 71, a retired publisher in Sausalito, California, is known for Badger friends who delay recommended fire, sending them relevant medical studies. “I am sort of hectorations,” she recognized.

Deana Hendrickson, 66, who provides daily care to three young grandsons in Los Angeles, asked for an additional MMR shot, although she was vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella when she was a child, in case her measles immunity has declined.

For older adults who express more confidence in vaccine safety than younger groups, in recent months have brought welcome research. Studies have found significant advantages of a new vaccine and improved versions of the oldest, and a vaccine can confer a major bonus that no one provided.

New studies are coming to a busy political moment. The national secretary of health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has long denied certain vaccines, calling them dangerous and saying that the government officials who regulate them are compromised and corrupt.

On June 9, Kennedy pulled a panel of scientific advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and then replaced them by some who were skeptical about vaccines. But so far, Kennedy has not tried to slow down access to older Americans.

Proof that vaccines are beneficial remain overwhelming.

The expression “vaccines are no longer only for children” has become a favorite for William Schaffner, specialist in infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

“The population over the age of 65, which often undergoes the worst impact of respiratory viruses and others, now has the benefit of vaccines that can prevent a large part of this serious disease,” he said.

Take the flu, which sends 140,000 to 710,000 people each year to hospitals, most of them, and is deadly at 10% of hospitalized elderly people.

For about 15 years, the CDC approved several increased flu vaccines for people 65 and over. More effective than standard formulation, they contain either higher levels of the antigen which strengthen protection against the virus or incorporate an adjuvant which creates a stronger immune response. Or they are recombinant vaccines, developed through a different method, with higher antigen levels.

In a meta-analysis by the American Gériatrics Society newspaper, “all improved vaccination products were superior to the standard dose to prevent hospitalizations,” said Rebecca Morgan, healthy research methodologist at Case Western Reserve University and author of the study.

Compared to the standard flu vaccine, improved vaccines have reduced the risk of influenza hospitalization in the elderly, by at least 11% and up to 18%. The CDC advises adults aged 65 and more to receive improved vaccines, as many already do.

More good news: vaccines to prevent syncytial respiratory virus in people aged 60 and over behave admirably.

The RSV is the most common cause of hospitalization for infants, and also presents significant risks for the elderly. “Season and season,” said Schaffner, “he produces epidemics of serious respiratory diseases that compete with the flu.”

Since the FDA approved for the first time an RSV vaccine in 2023, the 2023-24 season provided “the first opportunity to see it in a real context,” said Pauline Terebuh, epidemiologist at the Western Reserve School of Medicine and author of a recent study in the Jama Network Open.

During the analysis of electronic health files for nearly 800,000 patients, the researchers found that vaccines were 75% effective against acute infection, which means a disease serious enough to send a patient to a health care provider.

Vaccines were 75% effective to prevent urgent care visits, and 75% effective against hospitalization, both between 60 to 74 and the elderly.

Immunodeprimed patients, despite a slightly lower level of protection against the vaccine, will also benefit, said Terebuh. As for undesirable effects, the study found a very low risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare condition which causes muscle weakness and which generally follows an infection, in approximately 11 cases for 1 million doses of vaccine. That, she said, “should not dissuade people.”

The CDC now recommends vaccination by the VRS for people aged 75 and over, and for 60 to 74 years if they are more at risk of serious illness (for example, heart disease).

As the data of the 2024-25 season become available, the researchers hope to determine whether the vaccine will remain a and the form, or if immunity will require repeated vaccination.

People 65 and more express the greatest confidence in the safety of vaccines of any adult group, a KFF survey found in April. More than 80% said they were “very” or “somewhat confident” about MMR, shingles, pneumonia and flu vaccines.

Although the Covid vaccine has led to lower support in all adults, more than two -thirds of older adults have expressed their confidence in its safety.

Even skeptics could excite by a possible advantage of the zona vaccine: this spring, Stanford researchers reported that for seven years, the vaccination against the zona reduced the risk of dementia of 20%, a conclusion that made the headlines.

Biases often undermine observation studies which compare vaccinated with unvaccinated groups. “People who are healthier and more motivated by health are those who are vaccinated,” said Pascal Geldsetzer, epidemiologist at the Knight Initiative For Brain Resilience in Stanford and the main study of the study.

“It is difficult to know if it is a cause and an effect,” he said, “or if they are less likely to develop dementia anyway.”

The Stanford team therefore took advantage of a “natural experience” when the first zostal vaccine, Zostavax, was introduced to Wales. Health officials established a strict age cut: people who are 80 years old at the latest on September 1, 2013 were not eligible for vaccination, but even slightly younger were eligible.

In the sample of nearly 300,000 adults whose birthdays approached each side of this date, almost half of the eligible group received the vaccine, but practically no one in the older group did.

“As in a randomized trial, these comparison groups should be similar in all directions,” said Geldsetzer. A substantial reduction in dementia diagnostics in the group eligible for vaccines, with a much stronger protective effect in women, therefore constitutes “more powerful and convincing evidence,” he said.

The team also noted a reduction in dementia rates after the introduction of Zona vaccines in Australia and other countries. “We continue to see this in a set of data after another,” said Geldsetzer.

In the United States, where a more powerful vaccine, Shingrix, became available in 2017 and supplanted Zostavax, Oxford investigators found an even stronger effect.

By matching nearly 104,000 older Americans who received a first dose of the new vaccine (the complete immunization requires two) with a group that had received the previous formulation, they found a delayed start of dementia in the Shingrix group.

The way a zona vaccine could reduce dementia remains unexplained. Scientists have suggested that the viruses themselves can contribute to dementia, so suppressing them could protect the brain. Perhaps the vaccine has raised the immune system in general or affects inflammation.

“I don’t think no one knows,” said Paul Harrison, a psychiatrist in Oxford and the study’s principal author. But, he added: “I am now convinced that there is something real here.”

Shingrix, now recommended for adults over 50, is 90% effective to prevent shingles and persistent nervous pain that can result. In 2021, however, only 41% of adults aged 60 and over received a dose of zona vaccine.

A link with dementia will require additional research, and Geldsetzer is trying to remove philanthropic funding for a clinical trial.

And “if you needed another reason to get this vaccine,” Schaffner said: “Here it is.”