Getting the shingles shot doesn’t seem to make older people healthier in general—but it might specifically help lower their risk of dementia, and that’s probably not just a coincidence.

Getting the shingles shot after age 80 might help people with dementia live longer, even if they already have dementia — it doesn’t stop dementia from starting, but it might slow it down.

Getting the shingles shot might help lower your risk of getting dementia later in life — a big study found people who got the vaccine were about 31% less likely to develop dementia than those who didn’t.

Getting the shingles vaccine might help older people avoid dementia—especially those over 75 or in their late 60s—but it doesn’t seem to help much for people in their early 70s, suggesting age matters.

Getting the shingles vaccine might help lower your risk of getting dementia later on—not because people who get the vaccine go to the doctor more or have fewer other health problems, since those things didn’t change in the same way for other serious diseases.

Getting the shingles shot when you're 65 or older might help lower your chances of developing dementia by about a third over the next several years.