Flu vaccine linked to lower rate of Alzheimer’s disease

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Americans’ belief in God, angels, heaven, hell and the devil fell to the lowest point in more than two decades.

Belief in all five spiritual entities has decreased 3 to 5 points since 2016.

Americans who regularly attend religious services, Protestants and Republicans were all more likely to believe in such spiritual entities.

Researchers have made a connection between receiving a flu vaccine and a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Avram Bukhbinder, an alum of the McGovern Medical School of UTHealth Houston, and Paul E. Schulz, professor of Neurology at McGovern Medical School, compared the risk of developing the disease in patients who had received to those who had not gotten a flu vaccination the year prior, with a sample of more than 1 million adults in the United States over the age of 65.

As a result, the pair were able to find that those who had received at least one flu vaccination within the past year were 40 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease compared to those who were unvaccinated.

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“We found that flu vaccination in older adults reduces the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease for several years. The strength of this protective effect increased with the number of years that a person received an annual flu vaccine — in other words, the rate of developing Alzheimer’s was lowest among those who consistently received the flu vaccine every year,” said Bukhbinder in a statement.

“Future research should assess whether flu vaccination is also associated with the rate of symptom progression in patients who already have Alzheimer’s dementia.”

During four-year follows, more than 5 percent of flu-vaccinated patients developed Alzheimer’s, while 8.5 percent of patients not vaccinated had developed the illness.

The reason behind the link needs further study, the researchers said. But past studies have found connection between a lowered risk for dementia and exposure to different adulthood vaccinations like the pneumonia, polio, herpes and tetanus vaccines.