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A new study led by UTHealth Houston shows that the risk of Alzheimer’s disease is significantly reduced in older adults who receive higher doses of the influenza vaccine compared to standard doses.
The survey results are announced today. Neurology.
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, affecting more than 7 million Americans age 65 and older in 2025, or approximately 1 in 9 people in the same age group. That number is expected to more than double by 2050.
A 2022 study led by Paul Schultz, MD, professor of neurology at UT Health Houston’s McGovern School of Medicine and director of the Center for Neurocognitive Disorders at UT Health Houston Neuroscience, found that people age 65 and older have a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease if they receive the influenza vaccine.
Just three years later, Schultz and his team published another study showing that the risk of Alzheimer’s disease was significantly reduced in older adults who received high-dose influenza vaccines.
“The Department of Public Health saw our vaccine research and asked if I could come and talk about it,” said Schultz, lead author of the study and the Rick McCord Professor of Neurology and the Umphrey Family Professor of Neurodegenerative Diseases at McGovern Medical School. “We reviewed the findings and I was asked if there was a difference between the different doses. I was confused.”
At age 65, your immune system becomes less effective at fighting infections. The CDC recommends that adults 65 and older receive a high-dose influenza vaccine that is four times the standard dose given to the general population.
“As a physician, I was surprised because I didn’t know higher doses were being suggested,” Schultz said.
Although influenza vaccination is recommended for everyone, complications from influenza infection can be especially harmful for people with Alzheimer’s disease. Prior to 2022, the CDC did not recommend one type of intramuscular influenza vaccine over another for adults 65 and older. The guidance was simply that the influenza vaccine should be administered annually, regardless of prescription. A previous study from UTHealth Houston showed that the inactivated influenza vaccine reduced the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by 40%, but there were no studies on how much the risk was reduced by receiving a higher dose of the vaccine.
Schultz also learned that some seniors are receiving standard doses instead because the aging population is growing and some areas are outstripping the supply of high-dose vaccines.
“So we started looking, and sure enough, we were able to recruit thousands of people over the age of 65 who received either a high dose or a low dose of the vaccine. Obviously, they’re at higher risk for Alzheimer’s disease than anyone else, because Alzheimer’s disease is age-related. And we were able to look at the high dose versus the low dose and see if there was a difference,” Schultz said.
Researchers analyzed nearly 200,000 participants, both men and women over the age of 65, and found that high-dose influenza vaccination was associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease compared to standard-dose vaccination. The results also showed that the protective effect of high doses was stronger in women.
Researchers found that the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease was reduced by nearly 55% in people 65 and older who received the high-dose flu vaccine, compared to the standard-dose flu vaccine, which reduced the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by 40%.
Abram Samuel Bukbinder, M.D., a graduate of McGovern Medical School and currently a clinical fellow in neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University, is the corresponding author. Mr. Schultz is also a faculty member at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the UT Health Houston School of Biomedical Sciences.
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University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Reference magazines:
https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000214782
