Getting the shingles vaccine doesn’t seem to help or hurt one racial group more than another when it comes to avoiding dementia in older U.S. veterans.

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 shot might lower your chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease by about a quarter to a third when you’re 65 or older — at least, that’s what some big health studies have noticed.

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 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 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.