Adults who keep up in vaccinations said to have a LOWER chance of developing alzheimers - Page 2

[Mama Metis]

Maybe it's more the "type" of person who gets the vaccines, and not the vaccine that key here. Kind of like Michael Pollan says about people who take nutritional supplements. Be the "type" of person who takes them without actually taking them.

Yeah, you are probably right. I only looked briefly, but I don't think they controlled for socioeconomic status, which is a pretty serious mistake in any epi study! Well, they controlled for education, but that's probably insufficient. People with higher incomes have lower levels of all kinds of diseases. And they are able to access more medical care, resulting in this case, in more vaccines. As always, correlation does not imply causation.

[Mama Metis]

I am curious to know what other people think about this because I read what was at that link, and all I got out of the study was that elderly people who remembered being vaccinated for polio, tetanus or diphtheria at some time in their lives were less likely to have Alzheimer's at the five-year follow-up. Now Alzheimer's can emerge slowly, and people who may not have failed the screening might still have had some early issues with their memory, and since the study required the elderly participants to self-report exposure to something they may only have had once in childhood, there is more than the usual recall bias at play. I thought it was interesting that recalling flu vaccine exposure did not have the same effect, since the exposure to that would likely have been more recent and more frequent.

This too! I think it's safe to say there are a few methodological issues here.

[EdnaMarie]

I bet you a million dollars that people who have more money go to the doctor more regularly, keep up with vitamins, pay attention to what they eat, get exercise, have jobs where they work regularly (and drink coffee or tea), and do ALL THE OTHER THINGS that reduce your risks for Alzheimer's.

I'm very pro-vax but studies like this are meaningless. Even socioeconomic data is nothing compared to the "adherent effect" (I think that's what it's called).

Basically, there is a type of person that takes their vitamins, eats their vegetables, gets the boosters, etc. A very conscientious person in general. This type of person is at lower risk for nearly every kind of mortality and morbidity, not only because they have money, but because they have knowledge, including knowledge about resources and how to connect with people.

These people are never eliminated from studies (because they follow the plan), and they always have SO MANY confounding factors (almost all positive, from income to class to education to personal tastes) that it's practically impossible to tease them out. And they are the ones who get the vaccines, who jog, who do whatever, and who don't get sick.

They might as well announce, "Another study shows that if you try really hard and are really positive, things will probably go better for you."

Duh.

[Mama Metis]

I'm very pro-vax but studies like this are meaningless. Even socioeconomic data is nothing compared to the "adherent effect" (I think that's what it's called).

Agreed, but it IS possible to control for socioeconomic status, whereas it's NOT possible (at least to my knowledge) to fully control for personality type, for instance one's "adherence". So while we wouldn't expect for the study investigators to try to control for an adherence effect, we should certainly expect them to control for income/socioeconomic status.

[mgg]

Originally Posted by Mama Metis

Agreed, but it IS possible to control for socioeconomic status, whereas it's NOT possible (at least to my knowledge) to fully control for personality type, for instance one's "adherence". So while we wouldn't expect for the study investigators to try to control for an adherence effect, we should certainly expect them to control for income/socioeconomic status.

Like I said, the only thing this study merits is more study. I think it would be interesting to see them do this where they did account for as many of these factors as possible.

If the key factor is to determine if immunizing makes a difference, then you would want to minimize all other variables. It would be very difficult to do,but wouldn't it be interesting to take a sample of people like yourselves (forgive the generalizations here!)? Individuals who are interested and concerned about your physical well being, cognizant of how you treat yourselves physically, but resistant to the use of immunizations.

Even then, it would be a very difficult sample to collect. But it could be interesting!

Of course, no study ultimately will be perfect!

[EdnaMarie]

Originally Posted by Mama Metis

Agreed, but it IS possible to control for socioeconomic status, whereas it's NOT possible (at least to my knowledge) to fully control for personality type, for instance one's "adherence". So while we wouldn't expect for the study investigators to try to control for an adherence effect, we should certainly expect them to control for income/socioeconomic status.

Certainly. I was only replying to the original post. Failure to control for everything else is also a massive fail.

[EdnaMarie]

Originally Posted by mgg

Even then, it would be a very difficult sample to collect. But it could be interesting!

Of course, no study ultimately will be perfect!

If they have no idea how getting vaccinated could be causally related to Alzheimer's or the lack thereof, why would they put time and effort and money into it? I mean, considering things that have serious potential, like stem-cell research, need scientists and funding?

Again, I'm all for vaccinating, but nobody is going to say, "Well, gee, I was a little concerned about Timmy getting tetanus on the playground, but this Alzheimer's thing seals it for me."

Or, "Well, I'm not willing to get daily exercise, join a social club where I can volunteer and be needed, watch my diet and keep working, but hey, I guess I'll keep up on my shots throughout my life... oh, wait, too late!"

I just do not see how this could go anywhere. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the MMR is the key to staving off dementia. Somehow, I doubt it.

[mgg]

Originally Posted by EdnaMarie

If they have no idea how getting vaccinated could be causally related to Alzheimer's or the lack thereof, why would they put time and effort and money into it? I mean, considering things that have serious potential, like stem-cell research, need scientists and funding?

Again, I'm all for vaccinating, but nobody is going to say, "Well, gee, I was a little concerned about Timmy getting tetanus on the playground, but this Alzheimer's thing seals it for me."

Or, "Well, I'm not willing to get daily exercise, join a social club where I can volunteer and be needed, watch my diet and keep working, but hey, I guess I'll keep up on my shots throughout my life... oh, wait, too late!"

I just do not see how this could go anywhere. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the MMR is the key to staving off dementia. Somehow, I doubt it.

Edna Marie, I couldn't agree more! I guess I should have clarified. While the only thing the study merits is more study. That would be way, WAY down my list of things to study. In fact, that is the reason that studies like this come out with limited conclusions. It's likely this wasn't an independent study. In other words, they probably pulled this information from a data collection of a much wider range of information. The conclusion therefore is interesting, but not, well, conclusive!

While I think the hypothetical follow-up study would be interesting, I certainly don't think it's one we need to focus on!

[mountainfeather]

I vaccinate, but I'm not too impressed with this study. It relies on self-reporting of vaccine exposure. Twice I've had accidents where I worried about tetanus, and I couldn't remember offhand whether I'd gotten a booster in the past 10 years when the nurses asked me. And the researchers are asking the elderly to self-report vaccine exposure. If the study someone linked above to is truly the study in Esquire, the authors say,

"Second, because of the self-reported nature of the risk factor questionnaire, we cannot exclude the possibility of recall bias."

Umm, duh.