Dr. Pascal Geldsetzer

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61 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 1 Jun

Dr. Pascal Geldsetzer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Science Friday · Can the shingles vaccine stave off dementia? · 1 Jun 2026 podcast

But they have this massive difference in ever getting the vaccine because of this eligibility rule at a pretty arbitrary date of birth eligibility cutoff.

And now you've got comparison groups just like in a clinical trial where we know that all that's different about the control group and the intervention group is whether the coin landed on heads or tails.

Here, all that's different about the intervention and the control group is whether you happen to be born just a few days earlier or a few days later.

essentially by random chance.

So this is what makes this evidence that we're able to generate for shingles vaccination and its health outcomes so much more powerful and so unique.

You know, such a unique opportunity

opportunity in observational data to get a cause and effect is really rare.

And that's why I'm so excited about this, the shingles vaccination program and research and, you know, especially these large effects that we keep seeing for dementia.

Yeah, so we see these large protective effects for new diagnoses of dementia in the future.

And we keep seeing this in various different, in all these different settings that have rolled out the Shingles vaccine using these state-of-birth cutoffs.

So it's not a fluke finding.

It's something that repeats in data set after data set.

And there are large protective effects, which, you know, would be... How large?

So our best guess is a 20% reduction in new dementia diagnoses over seven years.

So that is large, especially given that it's such a simple, inexpensive, readily available, one-off intervention, right?

It's not even a medication that you have to take every day, let alone a lifestyle regimen that you have to adhere to over decades, right?

And it's safe and prevents shingles as well, which is nice.

And so you've got a readily scalable intervention with large protective effects.

So that would be a big, big deal for population health.

I agree that a clinical trial would be ideal to conclusively test this link.

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