[HN Gopher] Flu vaccination linked to 40% reduced risk of Alzhei...
___________________________________________________________________
Flu vaccination linked to 40% reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease
Author : cachecrab
Score : 156 points
Date : 2022-06-27 19:45 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.uth.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.uth.edu)
| _Microft wrote:
| Summary: there were hints from smaller studies or studies on
| particular groups (e.g. veterans) that flu vaccinations can
| reduce the probability of elderly people to develop Alzheimer's
| dementia. Here, almost 1 million pairs of recently flu vaccinated
| and not vaccinated people were matched and studied. A large
| protective effect was found. Other adulthood vaccinations show
| similar effects, hinting at a more general mechanism. There is a
| section about hypothesized mechanisms in the paper [0] which also
| points towards more general effects and not simply "avoidance of
| infection".
|
| Search [0] for "Hypothesized mechanism" or even "BCG" for a
| concrete example of a vaccine that most likely does not act via
| prevention of infection (it is a tuberculosis vaccine and most
| people never get tuberculosis. It still shows a protective
| effect).
|
| [0] https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-
| alzheimers-... (Open Access)
| caromontminy wrote:
| Great news ! It's good to know that flu vaccination has two
| benefits
| geraldwhen wrote:
| Correlation is not causation. Ice cream sales don't cause
| drowning.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Correlation is not causation_
|
| No, but correlation isn't meaningless either. This study [1]
| appears to be as robust as one can get without doing a
| double-blind trial. Given the effect size, I suspect that is
| in the works.
|
| [1] https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-
| alzheimers-...
| dragontamer wrote:
| Correlation is sufficient to draw additional studies to add
| to the discussion however.
|
| And with a proper survey, you can actually account for a lot
| of these effects. (Ex: after accounting for outdoor
| temperatures, the Ice Cream Sales / Drowning correlation can
| be largely factored out).
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Ice cream sales don't cause drowning._
|
| Imagine thinking this study and those datasets are remotely
| the same.
| dangom wrote:
| That's an incredible effect size.
|
| Mechanisms hypothesized to be at play:
|
| "These mechanisms--and those underlying the effects of adulthood
| vaccinations on all-cause dementia risk in general--can be
| grouped into at least three broad, non-exclusive categories: 1)
| influenza-specific mechanisms, including mitigation of damage
| secondary to influenza infection and/or epitopic similarity
| between influenza proteins and AD pathology; 2) non-influenza-
| specific training of the innate immune system; and 3) non-
| influenza-specific changes in adaptive immunity via lymphocyte-
| mediated cross-reactivity."
| fsiefken wrote:
| Purely anecdotal; I found it odd to see my mother (diagnosed
| with alzheimer 3/4 year ago) behaving and talking more coherent
| days after her mRNA covid-19 vaccine shots. I thought perhaps
| the immune response lessened the symptoms temporarily.
| Fomite wrote:
| Whether or not that's an incredible effect size sort of
| depends. For infectious disease epidemiology, which regularly
| sees _extremely_ strong effects because of the very short
| causal chain between an infection and an outcome, it 's not all
| that extraordinary.
| i_love_limes wrote:
| Epidemiologist in training here... There are quite a few comments
| in this thread already jumping on the 'correlation != causation'
| train. While that is true, I'd like to clarify a couple things:
|
| 1. The journal article didn't suggest it was causal. But such a
| correlation with such a large population warrants publication and
| further research into causation.
|
| 2. literally the first thing that any epidemiologist would
| consider is potential confounders. There is a big list of
| covariates they included into their model here:
| https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-...
|
| There are quite a few things that can be done to alleviate
| potential false correlations: DAGs, prior literature, removing
| confounders, and including covariates are all things at disposal.
|
| 3. Such a large sample size + previously reported findings + an
| inclusion of enough covariates still doesn't == causation, BUT
| it's important to publish and shout about so we can then look
| into the potential biological underpinnings that may cause this.
| Which by the way, those experiments may still use data science
| techniques.
|
| 4. If you are actually interested, there is a whole topic of this
| called 'causal inference' with one famous criteria list called
| the 'Bradford Hill Criteria':
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_Hill_criteria. This list
| is often argued about.
|
| 5. If all of this information was new to you, please stop
| spouting 'correlation != causation'. You probably don't know as
| much as you think
| aaron695 wrote:
| georgia_peach wrote:
| Thank you for posting this. I doubt people can make it to
| adulthood--or even manage speaking in complete sentences--
| without having some rudimentary appreciation for " _correlation
| != causation_ ", yet it is so frequently posted--both here &
| the r-place.
|
| And its vileness is far beyond midwittery. It is a lazy &
| incredibly weasely way to stifle unwelcome lines of inquiry: by
| pre-emptively accusing anyone who would continue along those
| lines as a mental defective.
|
| That being said, modern research is mostly a profit/status
| driven false-positive factory.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/
| amacneil wrote:
| If they only intend to claim correlation, avoiding the word
| "linked" in the announcement would probably help with general
| public interpretation.
|
| I feel like in English, "linked" usually implies some sort of
| potential causation, not just a general relationship. For
| example: "boyfriend linked to murder case".
| kixiQu wrote:
| What's wrong with implying _potential_ causation? Correlation
| _is_ potential causation. The whole reason one says the
| boyfriend is _linked_ to the murder case is because one _isn
| 't_ saying he's responsible -- and yet he _might_ be.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Correlations do imply a link, though. They don't imply
| causation, but in the absence of selection bias and with
| enough of a sample size, it is almost certain there is a link
| somewhere.
| toolz wrote:
| Well let's test this theory out then. Would you say I was
| being ridiculous if I told you that the number of people
| who drown in a year is linked to how many movies nicolas
| cage appears in?
|
| If so, then you might not actually believe linked is simply
| a synonym for correlation. I know I certainly would think
| that was a ridiculous way to phrase it.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| That's just being facetious though. We've all seen that
| website with funny correlations. This line of argument
| while an important lesson to look deeper into systems
| before claiming a correlation doesn't really add much
| here.
|
| Loads of people get the flu vaccine. Enough that I'd
| imagine the sample size is representative of the
| population at large. A large number of people also don't
| get the flu vaccine. So this is a surprising result.
| Especially since we are injecting a liquid into the
| people so there could reasonably be some effect we never
| thought of. Which is the whole point. These people aren't
| correlating things in completely unrelated fields and
| claiming a link.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| > the number of people who drown in a year is linked to
| how many movies nicolas cage appears in
|
| For those who don't know the reference:
| http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| The word for when there is no link is, in turn,
| 'coincidence'.
|
| Causation, correlation, coincidence.
|
| And then there's quantum entanglement.
| pcl wrote:
| This reminds me of the intentionally-ambiguous "officer-
| involved shooting" turn of phrase.
|
| https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-interactive-guide-
| to-...
|
| https://www.cjr.org/analysis/officer-involved-shooting.php
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _There are quite a few comments in this thread already
| jumping on the 'correlation != causation' train._
|
| Complaining about correlation not being causation is the
| perfect theme for the midwit meme. It's one of my pet peeves.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| The brainlet and sage text is "maybe x causes y."
| [deleted]
| planarhobbit wrote:
| I'd say they should show evidence that they know what they're
| talking about, but then I'd be accused of credentialism.
| LargeWu wrote:
| Being able to demonstrate technical understanding of a
| problem isn't credentialism. Conversely, having an
| undergraduate degree in X isn't evidence of expertise.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I do not remember where I read it (probably xkcd) but it was
| that correlation is not casuation, though the numbers are doing
| big winks to you (or something like that)
|
| As a physicist who had to endure helping biologists with
| statistics and cooling down their enthusiasm: it make sense to
| have a deeper thought about the experiment.
|
| As parent wrote, there may be various reasons for the
| correlations, sometimes you have random stuff, sometimes
| indirect stuff and in others extraordinary stuff. Many
| discoveries (especially older ones) fall into the last
| category.
| Symmetry wrote:
| I like the phrasing, "Correlation correlates with causation
| because causation causes correlations".
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Causation frequently removes correlations that would
| otherwise exist.
| Symmetry wrote:
| I don't think that's right? In theory you could have A
| and B that were naturally correlated and add a causal
| relationship between the two that exactly canceled that
| correlation but that would be infinity unlikely to happen
| by chance. In practice the only way that A and B can be
| correlated is that either A causes B, B causes A, or some
| C causes both A and B. Interestingly if both A and B
| cause C the C and A as well as C and B will be correlated
| but A and B won't be, allowing you to work out causation
| from a strictly correlational graph.
| acj wrote:
| > where I read it (probably xkcd)
|
| Yep, it's in the alt text for https://xkcd.com/552/
|
| "Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its
| eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing
| 'look over there'."
| [deleted]
| Spooky23 wrote:
| With this sort of thing, lots of social factors weigh in too.
| Access the flu shots implies regular access to healthcare and
| perhaps other interventions.
| blagie wrote:
| The scientists said it was causation. "We
| found that flu vaccination in older adults reduces the risk of
| developing Alzheimer's disease for several years. The strength
| of this protective effect increased with the number
| of years that a person received an annual flu vaccine
| - in other words, the rate of developing Alzheimer's
| was lowest among those who consistently received the
| flu vaccine every year"
|
| Yes, that's in an interview for the article. That's the reason
| (1) the general public misunderstands (2) people scream about
| it. Scientists get points for "high-impact research," and there
| is strong incentive to be dishonest.
|
| (As a footnote, personally, I do believe it is causation; I
| believe that as with COVID and EB, we've dramatically
| underestimated the long-term impact of many viral infections.
| But that's just a personal belief.)
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _The scientists said it was causation._
|
| Interesting. I don't read that as claiming causation, I read
| that as _describing_ the correlation.
|
| You're right though, it's confusing messaging, regardless.
| [deleted]
| threatofrain wrote:
| I've always read "protective effect" to be making a
| predictive statement and not a causal one.
| i_love_limes wrote:
| In the interview he seems to be more loose with his words,
| but that also doesn't say causation. In the paper the
| conclusion is "This study demonstrates that influenza
| vaccination is associated with reduced AD risk in a
| nationwide sample of US adults aged 65 and older."
|
| That is distinctly not causal.
| xupybd wrote:
| Sitting down and talking it's often hard to be as precise
| as you would like to be. Especially when you don't have
| time to reflect on the implications of what you've just
| said.
| spandrew wrote:
| This is a mischaracterization of even the words you've
| quoted.
|
| The team did indeed find that flu vaccines reduced the risk
| of Alzheimers. But he specifically doesn't say they know _why
| the flu vaccine lowers the risk_. Ie. They can 't claim
| causation if they don't understand the underlying reason for
| the change. That's not how science works.
|
| In fact in the article in question he says the opposite: That
| the immune system is vastly complex, and all they can say is
| the immune system reacts to flu vaccines (all flu, not just a
| specific one) by diminishing an Alzheimers response.
| -\\_(tsu)_/- More study needed plz.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Never gotten the flu vaccine before. Biggest fear in life is
| alzheimers. Guess I will get the flu vaccine annually going
| forward.
| seydor wrote:
| Participants in the study were on average 75 years old.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| My family has an unfortunate history of not living past 65,
| so may as well start now :)
| wincy wrote:
| The also allude to "other vaccines" in this article. Googled it
| and they mean the pneumococcal vaccines also gave a protective
| effect. So maybe get those. If you just tell your doctor you're
| an alcoholic they'll give it to you.
| loeg wrote:
| Worth getting anyway -- the flu is pretty miserable.
| willcipriano wrote:
| People who get yearly flu vaccines probably go to the doctor more
| regularly than those who do not. I would expect that people who
| more regularly go to the doctor are also more concerned about
| their health. I'd expect people who are concerned with their
| health to behave in ways that limit disease.
|
| Without a proposed method of action, I suspect this is just
| noise.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| The researchers controlled for "number of routine well visits
| during the look-back period, and total number of health care
| encounters during the look-back period (as a proxy for overall
| healthcare utilization rate)" [1].
|
| [1] https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-
| alzheimers-...
| willcipriano wrote:
| Thank you for the link. That's a interesting population,
| older people who regularly receive medical care but refuse
| flu vaccines. I wonder if that is representative of the
| general population.
| TylerE wrote:
| Otoh, people who visit the doctor regularly are more likely to
| be diagnosed
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Even simpler. Annual flu shots require a decent degree of
| executive functioning. People with early stage neurological
| decline are less likely to make or keep their appointment
| synu wrote:
| There's a section in
| https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-...
| called Hypothesized Mechanism(s), which contains (amongst
| supporting details) the following:
|
| > 1) influenza-specific mechanisms, including mitigation of
| damage secondary to influenza infection and/or epitopic
| similarity between influenza proteins and AD pathology; 2) non-
| influenza-specific training of the innate immune system; and 3)
| non-influenza-specific changes in adaptive immunity via
| lymphocyte-mediated cross-reactivity.
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| This article has very few details and is rather questionable, at
| best. Correlation does not imply causation. It could very well be
| that people who choose to get flu vaccines are more health-
| conscious and live a healthier lifestyle so they are less likely
| to get Alzheimers.
| yeeetz wrote:
| This is a published journal article that took those covariates
| into account. Off-hand comments dismissing articles with a
| correlation vs. causation quip is so expected and tiresome,
| especially since you can make these comments without reading
| the actual article.
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| It's interesting how you can condescendingly say "took these
| covariates into account" without even thinking about how many
| outside variables there are that they simply cannot take into
| account because there are obviously too many. Most people
| don't think too much and just read articles and take anything
| in writing as the truth.
| i_love_limes wrote:
| It links to the actual paper if you are interested, the paper
| has a whole table of covariates it took into consideration.
| https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-...
|
| I don't think the paper or the journal article suggested it was
| causal either. But such a correlation with such a large
| population warrants publication and further research into
| causation.
|
| You unfortunately chose literally the first thing that any
| epidemiologist would consider, which is considering potential
| confounders. Maybe read up a bit before commenting.
| ortusdux wrote:
| The 3rd paragraph links to the publication that this article is
| a brief summary of. They controlled for many lifestyle factors
| in their research.
|
| https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-...
| seydor wrote:
| A lot of armchair scientists in the comments. It's quite striking
| effect but why is it published on IOS press? Looks like there
| might be more worth exploring in that dataset. What are the ways
| in which their result could be an artifact?
| lancebeet wrote:
| It's quite remarkable that an effect of this size on such a large
| group seems to have gone undetected for such a long time. As a
| layman, I would almost have expected geriatricians to have made
| the observation during their own practice.
| MuchoMaas wrote:
| Also quite remarkable that the flu vaccine seems to have a
| larger impact on the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease than it
| does on, well, influenza.
| calebm wrote:
| What a strange and unexpected positive side-effect. Thanks
| goodness there are no possible unexpected negative side-effects.
| dragontamer wrote:
| My sister who is a public health specialist, cautioned me about
| how difficult establishing cause-and-effect in these sorts of
| discussions can be in general. She hasn't talked to me about this
| specific case, but lemme bring something up from the perspective
| that we Computer Scientists can understand.
|
| Cause-and-effect chains form a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph). For
| example, A causes B causes C, in theory (or in this case, A
| causes B prevents C. Cause vs prevent doesn't really matter, its
| just a negative on the correlation diagrams)
|
| In this case, we want to determine if "Flu Vaccination
| causes/prevents Alzheimer's Disease".
|
| Now lets consider a bunch of real life factors. Wealth, Age, Sex,
| Race, Educational Attainment, Insurance. Just the basic stuff
| anyone would think about. Lets focus on Educational Attainment +
| Insurance to keep things simple.
|
| * Education -> Flu + Education -> Alzheimer's? Or is it the case
| that "stronger mind -> Education -> Flu Vaccines" and "stronger
| mind -> Education -> Alzheimer's" ?? Education is almost
| certainly a conflating situation (Education would probably cause
| higher flu vaccine uptake, and simultaneously would reduce
| Alzheimers), so maybe the Flu vaccine isn't causing the effect...
| but is instead just a cross-correlation to education level.
|
| * Insurance probably causes flu-vaccines (because flu vaccines
| are free for most insurance plans). Insurance probably doesn't
| cause/prevent Alzheimer's though. So we have "Insurance -> Flu-
| vaccine -> Alzheimer", which means we don't have to worry about a
| cross-correlation in this case.
|
| --------
|
| Etc. etc.
|
| Basically: to truly understand if we have a cause-and-effect
| situation here, we need to think of all possible conflating
| factors (such as education), while discounting factors that are
| "along" the DAG-chain towards the hypothetical result (ex:
| Insurance).
|
| After that, there's apparently a lot of math and analysis that we
| can do. If we take the records of the people who participated in
| this study, and get their educational levels + insurance
| information, we can then account for these conflating factors.
|
| I probably messed up the language and everything else for that
| matter. But just a reminder that public health discussions are
| rather technical. There's both a science and an art to the whole
| process, and just reading the "results in the raw" could lead to
| a misunderstanding.
|
| ----------
|
| The best example of this is "Ice Cream causes Drowning". (Real
| life: Hot summer temperatures cause ice-cream consumption. Hot
| summer temperatures cause people to swim.) We need to account for
| the Hot-temperature effect if we want to find the truth behind
| that correlation.
|
| There's also the chance that we've got it all backwards.
| Alzheimer's causes people to stop taking the flu vaccine. (IE:
| Alzheimer's might cause people to be more easily swayed by anti-
| vax propaganda, causing them to take less flu vaccines)
|
| Figuring out all possibilities (as well as possibilities that
| aren't even listed) is the job of a public health care
| specialist. They'll get it wrong, but hopefully less wrong than
| you or I would. There's apparently mathematical techniques to be
| used to tackle each of these questions I brought up.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _lets consider a bunch of real life factors. Wealth, Age,
| Sex, Race, Educational Attainment, Insurance. Just the basic
| stuff anyone would think about_
|
| The study measured an extensive list of covariates [1]. The
| data source, "medical claims, pharmacy claims, administrative
| claims, and laboratory result data for privately insured or
| Medicare Advantage with Part D enrollees who have both medical
| and prescription-drug coverage" [2], excludes the uninsured and
| those without Medicare Part D, so that's not a confounder.
|
| I'm having trouble finding a bias that would create this effect
| size other than reverse causation, _i.e._ people developing AD
| forget to get their flu shots.
|
| [1] https://content.iospress.com/download/journal-of-
| alzheimers-...
|
| [2] https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-
| alzheimers-...
| dragontamer wrote:
| That's indeed, a very impressive list of covariates factored
| in here.
|
| Hmmm... figuring out a possible mistake would require quite a
| bit of creativity. Creativity that's beyond my abilities at
| least, lol.
|
| Note that having such a list hampers a lot of "creative"
| attempts to take down the study. For example, Tobacco Use is
| very clearly related to the Republican/Democrat divide, and
| is therefore an adequate stand-in for the effects of
| political views (in case political views have an effect on
| flu-vaccinations / Alzheimer's).
|
| So anything "correlated" to these other covariates (ex: Red
| vs Blue states vs Tobacco) is "already factored in". As such,
| having a very, very big list like this helps dramatically.
| jeffreportmill1 wrote:
| Possible alternate title: "People with early onset Alzheimer's
| frequently forget to get flu shots".
| ac29 wrote:
| Given that >90% of non-vaccinated patients did not get a
| Alzheimer's diagnosis, this seems wrong.
| ajaimk wrote:
| There is a joke here about forgetting to get your flu vaccine
| bilsbie wrote:
| I posted this exact link two days ago. What gives?
| kelnos wrote:
| I wouldn't think anything nefarious happened. A few
| possibilities:
|
| * You posted it during a time of day when the site receives
| less traffic, and it scrolled too far down or off the New page
| for people to see it and vote it up. (Looks like you posted
| during lunch time on the US west coast, so maybe this isn't
| likely.)
|
| * When you posted, there was other big news or something going
| on that people were absorbed in, and didn't notice your post.
|
| * Some don't visit HN multiple times a day, and perhaps you
| just got unlucky that many of the people who would have found
| this interesting didn't see it 2 days ago, but did happen to be
| around today.
|
| * Your account was created three days ago, and I wouldn't be
| surprised if HN doesn't weight upvotes on new-account
| submissions as highly as for older accounts. Also consider that
| your first submission (the day before) was flagged and killed;
| that might put you in a time-limited penalty box. (I don't know
| any of this for a fact, as I have no idea how HN's software
| works, but it seems plausible.)
|
| * Just dumb luck. I've made a bunch of submissions that I
| thought were interesting (and though would appeal to a wide
| variety of HN readers/commenters), but it just turned out that
| it wasn't the case. Maybe it was just timing or something else.
|
| I believe the mods have stated that HN allows duplicate links
| within a shorter-than-normal time period if the previous
| posting didn't get much attention, so it's perhaps not
| surprising that the software allowed the repost.
| eganist wrote:
| The correlation is probably loosely causative based on other
| research pointing to certain infections preceding a descent into
| Alzheimer's or Dementia.
|
| Related (not exhaustive. The infectious theory is rapidly gaining
| ground especially in light of anti-beta-amyloid drugs repeatedly
| failing in clinical trials):
|
| * HSV/Alzheimer's:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8234998/
|
| * HSV/Alzheimer's: https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-
| of-alzheimers-...
|
| * HSV/Alzheimer's: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29488144/
| (current independent phase 2 trial to reproduce outcomes:
| https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03282916)
|
| * Gingivitis/Alzheimer's:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32280099/
|
| * Immunological role of Beta-Amyloid: https://alz-
| journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.100...
| srvmshr wrote:
| At some point we (researchers & scientists) should draw the line
| between correlation & causation.
|
| That there is 40% less incidence in flu vaccinated patients is
| established by observation, but is it due to flu vaccine by
| itself or factors which surrounds itself in people more prone to
| flu or who are medically more conscious? (edit: think of analysis
| of variance tests among identifiable medical & socioeconomic
| variables). If the researchers establish a positive link,
| wouldn't it be worthwhile to then suppose that amyloid plaques
| are somehow related to viral influenza replication - which by
| itself sounds a bit absurd (edit: Ok lot of good reference about
| infections around AD. I take this back, my bad)
|
| The alternative hypothesis is worth thinking too: Are people more
| prone to Alzheimer's also more prone to catching flu.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _wouldn 't it be worthwhile to then suppose that amyloid
| plaques are somehow related to viral influenza replication -
| which by itself sounds a bit absurd_
|
| This is a prominent theory for the cause of Alzheimer's disease
| [1].
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31900354
| lukev wrote:
| At some point we (commenters on hacker news) should stop
| reflexively typing this in response to every study without
| reading the paper.
|
| From the abstract:
|
| > Propensity-score matching (PSM) was used to create flu-
| vaccinated and flu-unvaccinated cohorts with similar baseline
| demographics, medication usage, and comorbidities.
|
| If you want to argue that the authors did a bad job at this,
| for some reason, that would be a really meaningful contribution
| and I'd love to hear the details.
|
| Otherwise, can we assume that the scientists writing and
| reviewing papers did a semi-competent job and are _at least_ as
| good at analyzing quantitative claims as someone commenting on
| HN because they are bored at work?
| srvmshr wrote:
| I am not an expert at this, though I have taken few credits
| of Biostatistics. I would be more interested if swapping the
| variables also gave significance in tests. Did the
| Alzheimer's cohort also have a higher incidence of flu
| related comorbidities? I understand this is difficult - but
| this is why ANOVA tests also are extensively used to show
| variable dependence or report the degree of dependence. It is
| unclear from their findings. Without that we are probably
| looking at some positive correlation without investigating
| the causation.
| nazka wrote:
| But virtual HN karma points are so juicy! /s
|
| Sometimes HN can do this or turn simple topics into some
| crazy meta stuff... I'm telling you so many times some
| comments look like what I will find in a parody of HN and/or
| bring no real value to the discussion but are so articulated
| and counter arguing and expanding and what not. Heck half of
| the times those comments start a new paragraph mid comment
| with << Heck... >>. And they all look the same. /renting
| rzzzt wrote:
| Hey, I can add all the references so noone else has to:
|
| - http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
|
| - https://xkcd.com/882/
|
| - (honorable mention: https://xkcd.com/552/ - gets cited
| less often but is relevant nonetheless)
| srvmshr wrote:
| Maybe you should look into specifics of what exactly I am
| asking as the question, before terming it "crazy meta
| stuff". I am trying asking valid questions, which may be
| wrong or someone will explain it better clearing my
| misconception. I will learn something new & be grateful.
| Win-win
|
| What is your contribution by this rant exactly, except
| making yourself look absurd?
| standardUser wrote:
| If anyone out there thinks there are still people who don't
| realize that "correlation does not equal causation", don't worry,
| we all know.
| bink wrote:
| Now you just have to convince them that scientists know how to
| control for these effects.
| lukev wrote:
| Lots of discussion in this thread about the _accuracy_ of the
| implied claim "vaccination can prevent Alzheimers", but not a
| lot about the correct course of action.
|
| Which seems to me to be, unambiguously, you should _absolutely_
| be religious about getting your flu shot every year. The vaccine
| is known to be safe and with few side effects (or at least, safer
| than the actual flu, which is the bar that needs to be cleared.)
|
| And even if it hasn't been conclusively _proven_ that vaccines
| can avert Alzheimer 's, you're at least putting yourself in the
| best possible cohort, right? Anyone familiar with Bayes' Theorem
| should be absolutely on board with this.
| runevault wrote:
| I will say, as someone with an egg allergy it isn't so black
| and white. Not everywhere carries alternative ways of getting
| flu vaccine, though hopefully post Covid mRNA versions will
| become more prevalent (assuming that version has the same
| impact, haven't read the article).
| ekianjo wrote:
| This seems like a dubious recommendation. In Japan there is a
| large acceptance of yearly flu shots yet Alzheimer s prevalence
| remains high.
| ksb wrote:
| Perhaps not. See this article:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4095986/
|
| > _Among developed countries, Japan has the lowest prevalence
| of both dementia in general and Alzheimer 's disease in
| particular._
| gojomo wrote:
| The words "linked to" or "associated with" are tells that no real
| causality has been established - no matter how casually, or
| sloppily, causality is implied by the paper or breezy PR
| summaries.
|
| Maybe, early pre-diagnosis aspects of eventual Alzheimer's (such
| as undiagnosed mild cognitive impairments) makes people less
| interested in, and diligent in pursuing, flu vaccinations. (In
| other words: the causality goes the other way.)
|
| But also, people with active family/social lives are both more
| likely to be reminded to get a flu vaccine, and less likely to
| develop Alzheimer's.
|
| And further: more conscientious people seek out vaccines. More
| conscientious people get Alzheimer's at a much lower rate. For
| example, this study -
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/... -
| suggests those in the 90th percentile of conscientiousness have
| 89% lower rates of Alzheimer's diagnoses than those in the 10th
| percentile of conscientiousness.
|
| While a mechanism from vax-induced immunity, and/or fewer actual
| infections, to less dementia is plausible, these other well-known
| correlates/confounders seem a likely explanation for these
| results, until/unless controlled-for.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-06-27 23:01 UTC)