Shingles vaccine and sildenafil linked to lower Alzheimer’s risk

1. An expert panel identified the shingles vaccine and sildenafil as the top candidates for repurposing to protect against Alzheimer’s disease.

2. Leveraging existing drugs with established safety data could cut the dementia drug development timeline by up to a decade.

An international panel of 21 dementia experts just wrapped up a major review, pinpointing the shingles vaccine and sildenafil as the most promising drugs to repurpose for Alzheimer’s. The study, led by the University of Exeter, combed through 80 existing medications to find candidates that could protect the brain by targeting neuroinflammation and blood flow. The shingles vaccine emerged as the front-runner because previous observational data suggests that people who get the jab may be significantly less likely to develop dementia. Sildenafil also made the cut due to its ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and potentially reduce the buildup of toxic tau proteins. For the primary care physician or geriatrician, this highlights a potential two-for-one benefit for patients already taking these common medications. The beauty of drug repurposing is that it uses medicines with decades of established safety data, skipping years of early-stage clinical risk. The experts are now calling for large-scale randomized trials to confirm if these protective effects actually hold up in a prospective setting. While you should not be prescribing these for cognitive health just yet, the findings suggest we might have powerful dementia-fighting tools already sitting in our pharmacies. This strategy could provide a cost-effective global solution while high-priced monoclonals remain out of reach for many. It is still unclear if newer shingles vaccines will offer the same level of neuroprotection as the older versions studied here. We also need more data on how these drugs might interact with the new amyloid-clearing therapies.

Image: PD

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