health

Measles vaccinations rose 291% among New Mexico adults during outbreak

anti-vaccine, health, measles, MMR, New Mexico, outbreak, texas, vaccination / Rejus Almole / March 15, 2026

In January 2025, a measles outbreak erupted on the western edge of Texas and soon spilled over to New Mexico and other states. The overall outbreak would become the largest the country has seen since 2000, when measles was declared eliminated from the US. In Texas, it was the largest outbreak recorded since 1992. And in New Mexico, it was the first measles outbreak the state had even seen since 1996.

But the trajectory of the two states’ measles cases diverged. Texas declared the outbreak within its borders over on August 18, with an end tally of 762 cases. In New Mexico, officials declared its outbreak, which began in February, over on September 26, with a total of just 99 cases.

One of the key differences, according to a new study, was that in New Mexico, the rapid spread of the highly infectious virus spurred a massive surge in measles vaccinations among children and adults. Overall, shots of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine increased 55 percent statewide from January to September compared to the same period in 2024.

The study, appearing in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, further broke down the increase in shots. Over the whole year, the number of MMR doses given to children (defined as less than age 18) increased 18 percent compared to 2024—from 27,988 in 2024 to 32,890 in 2025. Doses in adults (aged 18 and up) skyrocketed by a whopping 291 percent— from 5,748 in 2024 to 22,500 in 2025.

The increase in vaccination didn’t appear to be an unrelated fluke. Health officials noted that within two weeks of the outbreak being declared, the number of vaccine doses given in all regions of the state began to exceed the number given during the previous year. And in some regions, when a first measles case was identified, officials saw week-over-week increases in vaccinations as high as 78 and 83 percent.

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Woman sneezes out maggots after fly larvae get trapped in her deviated septum

bot flies, health, infection, nose, parasites, sheep / Tim Belzer / March 14, 2026

She had surgery to remove the mucus munchers, which recovered 10 larvae at various stages and a pupa. A genetic test and DNA sequencing confirmed they were sheep bot flies, as did visual inspection of two third-stage larvae and the puparium.

Third instar Oestrus ovis larva and puparium retrieved from the nasal sinuses of a 58-year-old female patient, Greece. A) The third instar was yellowish, with rows of spines on the ventral surface. B) The posterior peritremes were circular with a central button. C) The broken puparium was black and wrinkled and contained remnants of the pupa. Credit: Kioulos, Kokkas, Piperaki, Emerging Infectious Diseases 2026

Nasal novelty

Not only had experts never found a pupa in a human snout before, but they also thought the development to that stage was “biologically implausible.”

“The paranasal sinus environment does not meet temperature and humidity requirements for pupation, and host secretions, immune responses, and resident microbiota create a hostile milieu for pupal development,” the experts, led by Ilias Kioulos, a medical entomologist at the Agricultural University of Athens, wrote.

Still, in this poor woman’s nose, the pests persisted. Kioulos and his colleagues speculate that two factors favored the fly’s festering infection in the woman: a large initial dose of larvae and her severely deviated septum.

“From a purely anatomic perspective, we hypothesize that the combination of high larval numbers and septum deviation impeded normal egress from the nasal passages, permitting progression to the [third larval stage] and, in 1 instance, pupation,” they wrote. In other words, there were so many maggots in her crooked nasal passage that they created a bottleneck on their way out, allowing some to stay longer than usual. The other, equally disturbing possibility, is that the flies are adapting to using human noses for their full life cycle.

The experts note that, in a way, the woman was lucky. In animals, the third-stage larvae can’t pupate when they become trapped in the sinuses. Instead, they either dry out, liquify, or calcify, which can all lead to secondary bacterial infections.

From here, Kioulos and his colleagues warn that clinicians should be aware of the potential for human cases of sheep bot fly infections, which are widely distributed around the globe.

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Report: RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine agenda curbed as GOP realizes it’s unpopular

anti-vaccine, COVID-19, health, MAHA, mRNA, robert f kennedy jr / Kris Guyer / March 11, 2026

Kennedy’s plans were only getting started. The staunch anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist made his most brazen attack on vaccines in January, slashing the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule from 17 immunizations down to 11 to be in line with recommendations of Denmark, a much smaller country with a relatively homogenous population and universal health care. The US is now an outlier among peer nations for recommending so few childhood vaccines.

Conspiracy theories and political risks

While these and other changes to vaccine recommendations by Kennedy and his underlings have been widely decried by medical and public health experts, they are still not enough for his rabid anti-vaccine followers, who, in no uncertain terms, want all vaccines abolished.

On Monday, the MAHA Institute, a think tank stemming from Kennedy’s Make America Health Again movement, held an event brimming with prominent anti-vaccine activists. Those include Del Bigtree, a prominent conspiracy theorist who leads the anti-vaccine group Informed Consent Action Network, and Mary Holland, who is CEO of the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, which Kennedy founded.

The event was focused on an alleged “Massive Epidemic of Vaccine Injury,” a nonexistent health crisis the MAHA institute wants to sell to the American public, branded as the catchy term “Mevi.” The six-hour event was essentially an extravaganza of anti-vaccine talking points, with false claims, misinformation, and disinformation about immunizations, including that vaccines cause autism and autoimmune diseases and COVID-19 vaccines are deadly.

At the start of the event, MAHA Institute President Mark Gordon laid out his grand belief that the medical community has orchestrated an elaborate, global, decades-long conspiracy to hide the dangers of vaccines, which he called poisons, and falsify data showing their benefits. “Vaccines are the greatest scam in medical history,” one of his slides proclaimed.

He concluded that “the childhood vaccination schedule needs to be eliminated and all vaccines need to be removed from the market.”

While Gordon and the other speakers were not concerned about the popularity or political ramifications of their beliefs, the Trump administration appears to be. The Post noted that Trump’s top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, has concluded that vaccine skepticism is “rejected by most voters,” and skepticism of vaccine requirements is “politically risky.” His polling data, like many others, have found broad support for vaccines and vaccine requirements. Fabrizio warned in a December memo that politicians supporting eliminating vaccine recommendations “will pay a price in the election.”

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FDA contradicts Trump admin, declines to approve generic drug for autism

autism, fda, health, leucovorin, makary / Kris Guyer / March 10, 2026

In September, the Trump administration took what it called “bold actions” on autism that included touting the generic drug leucovorin as a promising treatment. In a news release, Marty Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, claimed a “growing body of evidence suggests” the drug could be helpful. And at a White House press event, Makary suggested it might help “20, 40, 50 percent of kids with autism.”

“Hundreds of thousands of kids, in my opinion, will benefit,” he said at another point in the event.

The bold claims were apparently persuasive. A study published in The Lancet last week found that new outpatient prescriptions of leucovorin for children ages 5 to 17 shot up 71 percent in the three months after the Trump administration’s actions.

But it became clear today that the rest of the FDA did not share Makary’s and the other administration officials’ view. In an announcement, the regulatory agency said it had approved leucovorin for a rare genetic condition—but not for autism.

In comments to the Associated Press, senior FDA officials said they found little evidence for expanding the drug’s use to autism and, thus, narrowed its review to the treatment of the rare genetic condition, which is cerebral folate deficiency (CFD) in adults caused by a genetic mutation in the folate receptor 1 gene (CFD-FOLR1).

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Trump’s divisive FDA vaccine regulator self-destructs, will exit agency (again)

fda, gene therapy, health, Prasad, vaccines / Kris Guyer / March 10, 2026

For the second time, Vinay Prasad is set to leave the Food and Drug Administration.

In a post on social media Friday, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary announced that Prasad will exit in April, adding that he got “a tremendous amount accomplished” during his year at the agency.

Prasad’s tenure was generally marked by controversy, but he is departing amid a cluster of self-destructive decisions. Those include a shocking rejection of an mRNA vaccine (which was over the objections of agency scientists and quickly reversed); a demand for an additional clinical trial on a gene therapy for Huntington’s disease, which was widely seen as moving the goalpost for the therapy; his startling choice to publicly attack the maker of that gene therapy, UniQure; and alleged abuse of FDA staff, who say he created a toxic work environment.

The moves have collectively roiled those within the agency, the Trump administration, the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, as well as patient advocacy groups.

On Monday, BioSpace reported that financial analysts were all but cheering Prasad’s departure, calling it “a big win for biotech, especially for companies in the rare disease space.” Several biotech companies that have faced setbacks and rejections at the hands of Prasad saw stock bumps on Monday. UniQure, for instance, saw its stock leap around 25 percent from Friday afternoon.

Constant controversy

This will be Prasad’s second exit from the FDA during the current Trump administration. In July, he resigned amid his controversial handling of a gene therapy treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, as well as criticism from far-right activist Laura Loomer, who called Prasad a “leftist saboteur.” He was reinstated less than two weeks later.

Since his return, Prasad has held key roles at the FDA; he is the chief medical and scientific officer and the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), which also makes him the top regulator of vaccines, gene therapies, and other biologic products.

His qualifications for those roles were always questionable. While Prasad is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco and a practicing hematology-oncologist (a doctor specializing in blood disorders and cancers), he came to the FDA with no regulatory experience and no expertise in vaccines or gene therapies. Prasad’s rise to regulatory relevance stemmed instead from his online criticism of pandemic-era public health policies, including COVID-19 vaccines, and his appearances on podcasts.

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Fishing crews in the Atlantic keep accidentally dredging up chemical weapons

burns, chemical weapons, fishing, health, mustard agents, mustard gas / Paul Patrick / March 6, 2026

Until 1970, the US dumped an estimated 17,000 tons of unspent chemical weapons from World War I and II off the coast of the Atlantic Ocean—and that disposal decision continues to haunt commercial fishing operations.

In an article published this week in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, health officials from New Jersey and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that there were at least three incidents of commercial fishing crews dredging up dangerous chemical warfare munitions (CWMs) off the coast of New Jersey between 2016 and 2023.

The three incidents exposed at least six crew members to mustard agent, which causes blistering chemical burns on skin and mucous membranes. (An example of these types of burns can be seen here, but be warned, the image is graphic.) One crew member required overnight treatment in an emergency department for respiratory distress and second-degree blistering burns. Another was burned so badly that they were hospitalized in a burn center and required skin grafting and physical therapy.

“Recovered CWMs continue to pose worker and food safety risks. Because of ocean drift, storms, and offshore industries, sea-disposed CWMs locations are largely unknown and potentially far from their originally documented dump site,” the health officials write.

It’s not the first such report in MMWR. In 2013, federal health officials reported another three incidents in the mid-Atlantic. The report noted that clam fishermen in Delaware Bay “told investigators that they routinely recover munitions that often ‘smell like garlic,’ a potential indication of the presence of a chemical agent.”

In the three newly reported incidents, one occurred in 2016 off the coast of Atlantic City when a crew was dredging for clams. A munition was brought onboard on a conveyor belt. A crew member noticed it and threw it overboard, but it was subsequently the member who developed arm burns requiring skin grafting. Beyond the health toll, a delay in communicating the incident allowed the clams dredged alongside the munition to move into production. This led to a recall of 192 cases of clam chowder and the destruction of 704 cases of clams.

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Americans trust Fauci over RFK Jr. and career scientists over Trump officials

CDC, confidence, fauci, fda, health, NIH, robert f kennedy jr, scientists, Trust / Rejus Almole / March 6, 2026

Anti-vaccine activist and current Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has worked hard to villainize infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, even writing a conspiracy-laden book lambasting the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

But a year into the job as the country’s top health official, Kennedy—who has no background in medicine, science, or public health—still holds less sway with Americans than the esteemed physician-scientist.

In a nationally representative survey conducted in February by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, 54 percent of respondents said they had confidence in Fauci, while only 38 percent had confidence in Kennedy. Breaking those supporters down further, 25 percent of respondents said they were “very confident” in Fauci, while only 9 percent said the same for Kennedy.

Overall, the survey found a clear divide between the confidence in Kennedy and other Trump administration officials and that of career scientists and medical associations.

Among federal agencies, 67 percent said they had confidence in career scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health. But only 43 percent said they had confidence in the leaders of those agencies.

“The public is differentiating the trustworthiness of career scientists in the CDC, NIH, and FDA from that of the leaders of those agencies and recalling substantially higher confidence in the guidance that former director Fauci provided than that offered by Secretary Kennedy or Dr. Oz,” Ken Winneg, APPC’s managing director of survey research, said in a statement.

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RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine policies are “unreviewable,” DOJ lawyer tells judge

aap, anti-vaccine, health, lawsuit, lawyer, robert f kennedy jr, vaccine / Paul Patrick / March 5, 2026

US Department of Justice lawyer Isaac Belfer argued that Kennedy has the broad authority to make all of the changes he has already made and more. He claimed that the AAP and other medical groups were asking the court to “supervise vaccine policy indefinitely.”

US District Judge Brian Murphy overseeing the case in Boston appeared skeptical of the suggestion that Kennedy has seemingly limitless authority over federal vaccine policy.

“Is it your position that [Kennedy] is totally unreviewable?” Murphy asked Belfer, according to Reuters. “If the secretary said instead of getting a shot to prevent measles I think you should get a shot that gives you measles, is that unreviewable?”

“Yes,” Belfer replied.

Belfer, arguing on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services, said the medical organizations were merely seeking to use the courts to enact their favored vaccine policy. But the lawyer for the groups, James Oh, countered that the vaccine policy changes—which were not carried out with typical processes and lack supporting scientific evidence—were done improperly and without reasoned decision-making.

Kennedy’s vaccine policy changes are the “actions of someone who believes he can do whatever he wants,” Oh said, according to Stat News.

Murphy indicated he would issue a ruling on the injunction before the CDC vaccine advisors plan to meet on March 18, calling it a “hard deadline.”

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In puzzling outbreak, officials look to cold beer, gross ice, and ChatGPT

AI, beer, chatgpt, health, MMWR, outbreak, public health, salmonella / Rejus Almole / February 28, 2026

An AI assist?

The author of the MMWR report, county health official Katherine Houser, noted that the beer-tent workers were hesitant to give details because they didn’t want to get any of their community members in trouble. But one let slip that someone had put leftover food in the cooler overnight at the start of the fair.

The county health officials hypothesized that the cooler had become contaminated with Salmonella that spread to beer cans from which people then drank, allowing for infection. But with the makeshift cooler gone, it would remain only a hypothesis. So, the health investigators then turned to ChatGPT for assurances.

After providing the chatbot with details of the outbreak, health investigators asked it several questions, including: “Will S. Agbeni grow in an improperly drained cooler?”; “Are any other sources, other than ice, likely if only canned beverages and no foods were available at this location?’ ; and “What examples of similar outbreaks have been documented in scientific literature?”

Some of the questions are easy enough to answer without a chatbot. A simple search on PubMed, a federal database of scientific literature, quickly pulls up examples of Salmonella being found in ice, for example. But, the chatbot assured the officials that the cooler was a “credible and likely” source of the outbreak and they stuck with the hypothesis.

In the end, the officials required new cooler sanitation protocols—and concluded that the AI assistance was helpful. “AI was effective in this rural setting for rapid situational awareness,” Houser wrote. However, she also acknowledged the potential concerns of using AI for outbreak investigations: “Given the inherent limitations of generative AI tools, including potential inaccuracies and lack of source transparency, all AI-generated summaries were critically reviewed and validated against primary literature before incorporation,” she wrote.

Overall, the case report has a murky ending. It’s unclear how helpful the chatbot actually was in this case. Critically reviewing AI-generated answers can easily take as much time as simply researching the answer on one’s own. And of course, we’ll never know for certain what was really going on in that makeshift beer cooler—though the new cooler sanitation protocols seem like a good idea, regardless.

In puzzling outbreak, officials look to cold beer, gross ice, and ChatGPT Read More »

15 state attorneys general sue RFK Jr. over “anti-science” vaccine policy

anti-vaccine activists, health, HHS, rfk jr, syndication, vaccines / Mike M. / February 26, 2026

This administration may be hazardous to your health

Trump administration’s reduced vaccine schedule “throws science out the window.”

A healthcare worker receives a Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine at Jackson Memorial Hospital on December 15, 2020 in Miami, Florida. Credit: Getty Images | Joe Raedle

Scientists have long warned that a warming world is likely to hasten the spread of infectious diseases, making vaccination even more critical to safeguard public health.

And though most scientists hail vaccines as one of public health’s greatest achievements, they have provoked fear, distrust, and contentious resistance since Edward Jenner invented the first vaccine, to prevent smallpox, in the late 1700s.

Yet, until now, the United States never installed an outspoken vaccine critic like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a top health official with the power to upend federal childhood vaccine recommendations. Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy and other top officials in the Trump administration have waged an “unprecedented attack on the nation’s evidence-based childhood immunization schedule,” a lawsuit, filed by 15 states, charged on Tuesday. Their actions will make people sicker and strain state resources, the suit claims.

A coalition of 14 attorneys general and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, is suing Kennedy, who has long promoted debunked theories linking vaccines to autism, as well as HHS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and its acting director, Jay Bhattacharya.

The multistate coalition is suing the agencies and their leaders, Mayes said in a press briefing Tuesday, “over their needlessly confusing, scientifically unsound, and unlawful revision of America’s immunization schedule.”

The suit also challenges Kennedy’s abrupt firing and “unlawful replacement” of 17 experts on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which recommends which vaccines children and adults should receive, “with unqualified individuals whose minority anti-vaccine views align with Kennedy’s.”

In January, the CDC, with advice from the reconstituted ACIP, took seven childhood shots off the list of vaccines routinely recommended for all children, rescinding the CDC’s established guidance that vaccines protecting against rotavirus, meningococcal disease, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, influenza, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus should be universally administered.

All the “demoted” vaccines, as the lawsuit calls them, prevent diseases that carry the risk of death. The January CDC memo recommends that parents consult with doctors for these vaccines, “taking the risk profile of each unique child into account.”

It does not make provisions for the millions of Americans who lack access to health providers who would provide such consultations.

ACIP’s vaccine recommendations have traditionally guided US health insurance coverage decisions, state school vaccine requirements, and physicians’ advice to parents and patients, Bonta said at the briefing. But Kennedy fired all the voting ACIP members four months after he promised Congress during his confirmation hearing that he’d leave the panel intact, Bonta said, noting that the suit is the 59th California has filed against the second Trump administration.

Kennedy said his unprecedented removal of the ACIP experts was “prioritizing the restoration of public trust above any specific pro- or anti-vaccine agenda,” in a press release in June.

Yet Kennedy’s picks include vaccine skeptics who “lack the requisite scientific knowledge and expertise to advise HHS and CDC on the ‘use of vaccines and related agents for effective control of vaccine-preventable diseases,’” as required by the committee’s charter, the suit argues.

“What Secretary Kennedy has done and what the Trump administration has enabled, throws science out the window, replaces qualified experts with unqualified ideologues, and then uses the resulting confusion to undermine public confidence in vaccines that have saved millions of lives,” Mayes said.

Stoking vaccine doubts leads to lower vaccination rates, which leads to more disease outbreaks—such as the hundreds of measles cases reported in 26 states over the past two months—more children in hospitals and greater strain on state Medicaid systems and public health infrastructure, Mayes said.

Democratic states are doing everything they can to fill the gaps left by this administration’s policies, she said. “But diseases cross state lines.”

Sowing doubt and confusion

The administration cited Denmark’s more limited childhood immunization schedule to justify its changes, but the Scandinavian country has fewer circulating infectious diseases and universal health care for a population that is tiny compared to the United States, the suit notes.

“Copying Denmark’s vaccine schedule without copying Denmark’s healthcare system doesn’t give families more options,” Mayes said, noting that millions of Americans lack access to health care, particularly in rural areas. “It just leaves kids unprotected from serious diseases.”

Inside Climate News asked HHS how it will ensure that parents without access to health care get their children the vaccines they need and how the administration plans to protect vulnerable populations as climate change fuels the spread of infectious diseases.

“This is a publicity stunt dressed up as a lawsuit,” said HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard, ignoring the questions. “By law, the health secretary has clear authority to make determinations on the CDC immunization schedule and the composition of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The CDC immunization schedule reforms reflect common-sense public health policy shared by peer, developed countries.”

The revised childhood immunization schedule wasn’t based on new science or expert consensus, Mayes said. “It was based on an ideological agenda, one that Secretary Kennedy has been pushing for years.”

Kennedy has been at the forefront of a dangerous movement that has significantly eroded trust in safe and effective vaccines, Bonta said. “While RFK Jr. is entitled to his own personal opinions, opinions, mind you, not facts, he isn’t entitled to use his opinions as the basis for breaking the law and endangering our children.”

The actions that RFK Jr. and ACIP have taken flout decades of scientific research, harm public health, and strain state resources by sowing doubt and confusion in vaccines and in science, Bonta said.

“California will be forced to expend resources to treat once rare diseases, to respond to outbreaks, and to combat misinformation,” he said. “I refuse to allow RFK Jr. to threaten the health and well being of the more than eight million young people who call the Golden State home, the 400,000 babies that are born here in California each year.”

Routine childhood vaccinations will prevent approximately 508 million cases of illness, 32 million hospitalizations, and 1,129,000 deaths among US children born between 1994 and 2023, scientists with the CDC reported in August 2024, before Donald Trump returned to office. The immunizations resulted in direct savings of $540 billion and societal savings of $2.7 trillion, they concluded.

“Without these vaccines, not only will our children and vulnerable individuals get sick, but our healthcare systems will have to shoulder the burden of increased preventable illnesses, preventable hospital visits, and avoidable costs,” Bonta said. “Vaccines save lives and save our states money. To get rid of them is illogical and unconscionable.”

Climate-fueled outbreaks

Two weeks before Bonta filed his latest lawsuit against the Trump administration, he denounced the Environmental Protection Agency’s repeal of the 2009 endangerment finding that recognized climate change as a threat to public health and welfare and provided the legal grounds to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

The Trump administration’s endangerment finding recision, like its overhaul of the vaccine schedule, “is completely divorced from and untethered from science and facts and data and evidence,” Bonta said at the briefing Tuesday, noting that California will continue to push back against the EPA’s action.

“We must follow the facts, the science, the evidence and data, including the interconnectivity between climate change and the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases,” Bonta said.

Climate hazards such as drought, floods, and heatwaves have exacerbated outbreaks of more than half of human infectious diseases, researchers reported in Nature Climate Change in 2022, either by impairing people’s resistance or bolstering transmission of pathogens. The team warned that the number of pathogenic diseases and transmission pathways worsened by climatic hazards “are too numerous for comprehensive societal adaptations,” underscoring the urgent need to address the source of the problem: greenhouse gases.

Arizona is seeing more extreme heat events as a result of climate change, leaving people with underlying conditions at greater risk of heat-related illness and death.

“A lack of vaccines, a lack of access to vaccines starting at birth, will make our population sicker and more vulnerable to extreme heat and to climate-related disasters,” Mayes said. “And that will be sort of a self-perpetuating cycle where you have a less healthy population that is less capable of withstanding the impacts of climate change, and then you have climate change that is expanding and growing ever-more dangerous, having a greater and greater impact on a less healthy society.”

The only bodies that are capable of providing scientific guidance and advice on vaccines to the entire country are the CDC and ACIP, Mayes said. “And we now basically don’t have that across a number of these diseases and vaccines,” she said. “So we’re not protected, and we’re going to continue to see these outbreaks across the country, including in our states, even though we’re doing everything we can to protect ourselves.”

Liza Gross is a reporter for Inside Climate News based in Northern California. She is the author of The Science Writers’ Investigative Reporting Handbook and a contributor to The Science Writers’ Handbook, both funded by National Association of Science Writers’ Peggy Girshman Idea Grants. She has long covered science, conservation, agriculture, public and environmental health and justice with a focus on the misuse of science for private gain. Prior to joining ICN, she worked as a part-time magazine editor for the open-access journal PLOS Biology, a reporter for the Food & Environment Reporting Network and produced freelance stories for numerous national outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Discover, and Mother Jones. Her work has won awards from the Association of Health Care Journalists, American Society of Journalists and Authors, Society of Professional Journalists NorCal, and Association of Food Journalists.

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

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Could a vaccine prevent dementia? Shingles shot data only getting stronger.

ars-health-featured, ars-health-shingles, chicken pox, dementia, health, inflammation, shingles, shingrix, vaccine / Rejus Almole / February 25, 2026

Latest data hints that benefits seen so far could be underestimates.

Shingrix, the vaccine for the shingles, is seen at a pharmacy on Friday, Jan. 18, 2019 in Cohoes, N.Y. Credit: Getty | Lori Van Buren

While lifesaving vaccines face a relentless onslaught from the Trump administration—with fervent anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. leading the charge—scientific literature is building a wondrous story: A vaccine appears to prevent dementia, including Alzheimer’s, and may even slow biological aging.

For years, study after study has noted that older adults vaccinated against shingles seemed to have a lower risk of dementia. A study last month suggested the same vaccine appears to slow biological aging, including lowering markers of inflammation.

“Our study adds to a growing body of work suggesting that vaccines may play a role in healthy aging strategies beyond solely preventing acute illness,” study author Eileen Crimmins, of the University of Southern California, said.

Another study this month suggested the positive findings against dementia from the past may even be underestimates of the vaccination’s potential, with a newer vaccine against shingles providing even more protection.

Shingles

If the dementia protection is real, it’s a fluke. The vaccine was designed for the entirely unrelated task of keeping the varicella-zoster virus—the cause of chickenpox (varicella)—from reactivating and causing an agonizing rash.

Anyone who suffered the itchy childhood affliction carries the virus with them for the rest of their lives, largely dormant in their nerve cells. But, if it awakens, it causes a painful, itchy rash—aka shingles (herpes zoster). The rash develops fluid-filled blisters and crusts over, lasting for days to several weeks. For some, it can be intensely painful, and the pain can linger for months or even years after the rash fades. If it occurs near the eye, it can cause permanent vision damage; near the ear, it can cause permanent hearing and balance problems.

Shingles is thought to be triggered by a fault in the immune response that keeps the latent virus in check, often from age-related decline. That’s where a vaccine comes in. The first was Zostavax, released by Merck in 2006, which delivers a hefty dose of a live, but weakened, version of the varicella-zoster virus. This spurs the immune system to shore up defenses to prevent the virus from reigniting. Studies found the vaccine cut the risk of shingles by 51 percent.

In 2017, a new vaccine hit the scene: Shingrix, a recombinant, adjuvanted vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline. Instead of a whole, live virus vaccine like Zostavax, Shingrix delivers only a key protein found on the outside of the varicella-zoster virus particle (glycoprotein e) that re-primes the immune system. The shot also contains an adjuvant—an extra ingredient that stimulates the immune system—to ensure a vigorous response. Trials found that the response to Shingrix is indeed vigorous, with the vaccine being 90 to 97 percent effective at preventing shingles in adults age 50 and up.

With its superior efficacy, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its vaccine advisors switched its recommendation in 2018, ditching Zostavax for the more effective Shingrix.

In the meantime, researchers noted that since Zostavax’s debut, vaccinated adults seemed to be at lower risk of dementia than their unvaccinated peers. But studies comparing the vaccinated to the unvaccinated raise the question of whether the data is simply pointing to a background difference between the two groups; perhaps people who seek vaccination are generally healthier—a problem called healthy-user bias.

Natural experiments

In the past few years, studies have been putting that concern to rest. Instead of comparing vaccinated versus unvaccinated, researchers took advantage of vaccine rollouts in different countries, including Australia, Canada, and Wales. The vaccine introductions created clear cutoffs for people who were suddenly eligible for the vaccine and people who were permanently ineligible. These “natural” experiments lessened the concern of people being able to self-select their group.

So far, the results of these studies have consistently supported the finding that shingles vaccination is linked to a lower risk of dementia. The study in Wales, for instance, published in Nature in April 2025, looked at outcomes in over 280,000 older people after the September 1, 2013, debut of Zostavax. At the time, people 71 to 78 years old progressively became eligible for the vaccine, while those who were 80 at the start of the rollout were ineligible and never became eligible. Researchers looked at dementia diagnoses over a seven-year follow-up period and found that vaccination among the eligible reduced the relative rate of dementia cases by 20 percent compared with the ineligible group.

That same month, researchers published a study in JAMA that followed over 18,000 older people in Australia after the November 1, 2016, rollout of Zostavax. People 70 to 79 at that date were eligible for a free Zostavax dose. But everyone age 80 or older was permanently ineligible. After a 7.4-year follow-up period, the researchers found that 5.5 percent of the ineligible people were diagnosed with dementia, while only 3.7 percent of those in the eligible category were diagnosed with the condition, a 1.8 percentage point drop.

A third natural study out this month in The Lancet Neurology found a similar 2 percentage-point drop in dementia rates in Canada after the Zostavax rollout there.

Newer vaccine

As Eric Topol, a molecular medicine expert at Scripps Research Institute, noted, if a drug were found to cut the risk of dementia by 20 percent, it would be considered a breakthrough. But data on the shingles vaccine has been met with no such fanfare.

Still, further data suggests that vaccination may be even better than it already appeared—the rosy findings so far may be an underestimate based on the now-outdated Zostavax vaccine. With Shingrix, which is significantly more effective against shingles, the protective effect against dementia may be even larger.

In 2024, researchers reported another natural experiment comparing dementia rates among over 200,000 people in the US vaccinated before or after the switch from Zostavax to Shingrix. The study, published in Nature Medicine, found that compared with Zostavax, vaccination with Shingrix was linked to a 17 percent relative increase in dementia-free time.

A study published in Nature Communications this month by researchers in California went further. They compared dementia rates among nearly 66,000 people who received the Shingrix vaccine and over 260,000 unvaccinated matched controls. The researchers found that the vaccinated group had a 51 percent lower risk of dementia compared to the unvaccinated controls.

Lingering questions

Of course, these consistent findings on dementia prevention raise the question of how exactly the vaccine is preventing cases. Unfortunately, researchers still don’t know. However, many have speculated that by fortifying immune responses against the varicella-zoster virus and preventing reactivation, the vaccine reduces overall brain inflammation that could contribute to the development of dementia.

Another lingering question from the data so far is that several studies have found that women see more benefit from the vaccine than men in terms of dementia risk. It’s unclear why this would be the case, but researchers have noted that there are some potentially related associations: Women are more likely to develop dementia than men, and they’re also more likely to get shingles.

The study published last month, looking at biological aging after shingles vaccination, tried to address some of these questions. The study, published in the Journal of Gerontology and led by Crimmins and Jung Ki Kim, looked at blood and health markers from over 3,800 adults, about half of whom were vaccinated and half not. The researchers used tests to examine markers for inflammation, immune response, cardiovascular health, signs of neurodegenerations, and gene activity. They also created a composite biological aging score for participants.

The results suggest that vaccinated people had lower signs of inflammation and molecular aging as well as better composite aging scores. The data also hinted that vaccinated women had better results on some of the molecular aging testing.

Kim noted that chronic, low-level inflammation can contribute to age-related health conditions, including cardiovascular disease and dementia. “By helping to reduce this background inflammation—possibly by preventing reactivation of the virus that causes shingles, the vaccine may play a role in supporting healthier aging,” she suggested.

Of course, additional studies will need to confirm the findings. And if they do, the results could also be even better in follow-up studies. In Kim and Crimmins’ study, the participants were vaccinated with Zostavax, the older vaccine, not the newer, more effective Shingrix.

Beth is Ars Technica’s Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes.

Could a vaccine prevent dementia? Shingles shot data only getting stronger. Read More »

Trump’s MAHA influencer pick for surgeon general goes before Senate

Casey Means, health, MAHA, robert f kennedy jr, Wellness / Rejus Almole / February 25, 2026

Casey Means, President Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, will appear before the Senate Health Committee on Wednesday and is likely to face scrutiny over her qualifications for becoming the country’s top doctor.

Though Means holds a medical degree from Stanford Medical School, she dropped out of her medical residency and holds no active medical license. Instead, she has pursued a career as a wellness influencer, embracing “functional” medicine, an ill-defined form of alternative medicine. She co-founded a company called Levels, which promotes intensive health tracking, including the use of continuous glucose monitoring for people without diabetes or prediabetes, which is not backed by evidence.

Last year, an analysis by The Washington Post found that Means earned over half a million dollars between 2024 and 2025 from making deals with companies described as selling “diagnostic testing,” “herbal remedies and wellness products,” and “teas, supplements, and elixirs.”

But Means is best known as an ally to anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a popular influencer among Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) followers.

In 2024, Means and her brother Calley Means—also a close Kennedy ally and Trump administration official—wrote a book some consider MAHA’s bible: Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health. The book provides dietary and lifestyle advice, including a recommendation to avoid processed foods, seed oils, fragrances, a variety of home care products, fluoride, unfiltered water, bananas (when eaten alone), receipt paper, and birth control pills. It includes a chapter titled “Trust Yourself, Not Your Doctor.”

Trump’s MAHA influencer pick for surgeon general goes before Senate Read More »