While this would be lovely,
I think it just proves people with dementia are less likely to remember to get a flu vaccine.
replies(2):
I think it just proves people with dementia are less likely to remember to get a flu vaccine.
I think you may have misread the fine article.
Symptoms were observed to develop (or not develop) after a flu vaccination shot.
Prior to that the decline can be decades in the making. My gran obviously had dementia for 15 years before her diagnosis, by the time she was given it the only words she could say was "keep on keeping on"
Specifically to your most recent point, however, I'd observe that if treatment diagnosis is delayed as long as possible to avoid the stigma, that would put back treatment diagnosis for both groups, so it's hardly a compelling distinction there.
Anyway, I'd expect people with dementia at the time of their flu shot would have been assessed by the caregiver, and they would probably have been taken to the clinic by a family or friend anyway.
The compelling anecdote of your gran notwithstanding, of course.
Its called selection bias.
The root cause of the measurement issue is that people are less likely to get the flu vaccine if they have dementia. People who had the flu vaccine are already much less likely to suffer cognitive decline even if the flu vaccine was a placebo.
This sort of stuff is why double blind RCTs exist and have millions spent on them.
Also why all the dementia treatments to date failed to work, because these issues are so often ignored.
Also perversely - mental assessments are typically carried out on people who doctors "dont" think have dementia (to rule it out as a cause of symptoms)
Consider this "back of the envelope" calculation. 10% of the population will develop dementia. having early dementia symptoms makes you 50% less likely to get the flu vaccine. 70% of people get the flu vaccine.
If you randomly selected 200 who didnt get the vaccine and 200 who did from this group, you would expect to see only 13 of the 200 develop dementia when vaccinated, but 53/200 in the unvaccinated group.