Vaccination status correlates with better health outcomes and lower risk of a range of age-related disease unrelated to the target of the vaccine. One possible contribution to this outcome is that people who make the effort to be vaccinated also tend to be more conscientious about other health practices. Another involves the trained immunity effect, in that many vaccinations have been demonstrated to both reduce maladaptive age-related inflammation and increase immune capabilities against a variety of unrelated targets. The data reported here argues more for the trained immunity effect, in that researchers note reduced inflammation as an outcome correlated with shingles vaccination status.
Using data from the nationally representative U.S. Health and Retirement Study, researchers examined how shingles vaccination affected several aspects of biological aging in more than 3,800 study participants who were age 70 and older in 2016. Even when controlling for other sociodemographic and health variables, those who received the shingles vaccine showed slower overall biological aging on average in comparison to unvaccinated individuals.
Researchers measured seven aspects of biological aging: inflammation; innate immunity (the body's general defenses against infection); adaptive immunity (responses to specific pathogens after exposure or vaccination); cardiovascular hemodynamics (blood flow); neurodegeneration; epigenetic aging (changes in how genes are turned "off" or "on"); transcriptomic aging (changes in how genes are transcribed into RNA used to create proteins). The team also used the measures collectively to record a composite biological aging score.
On average, vaccinated individuals had significantly lower inflammation measurements, slower epigenetic and transcriptomic aging, and lower composite biological aging scores. The results provide more insight into the possible mechanisms underlying how immune system health interacts with the aging process. Chronic, low-level inflammation is a well-known contributor to many age-related conditions, including heart disease, frailty, and cognitive decline. These potential benefits could also be persistent. Participants who received their vaccine four or more years prior to providing their blood sample still exhibited slower epigenetic, transcriptomic, and overall biological aging on average versus unvaccinated participants.
Link: https://gero.usc.edu/2026/01/19/shingles-vaccine-slower-biological-aging/
View the full article at FightAging
