Dementia, shingles and statins ...pharma's biggest oops!

I have just returned from my local GP surgery for a routine check and saw a poster informing all that one

in four adults will get shingles. Excuse me! One in four? I would have queried this figure except

for the fact that amongst my 60+ peers I find shingles is, well, rampant.. and consequently

I am looking for my free shingles vaccination as soon as I turn 70.

Shingles is nasty, painful and infectious; especially to those who never had chickenpox or the chickenpox vaccination. Worse, you are not guaranteed to get better. Shingles is a bit like its relative the herpes cold sore, it is a reactivated virus acquired earlier in life. Shingles is a reactivated chickenpox virus once living quietly in nerve cells.

How is it reactivated?  The consensus is that it is a result of an immunosuppressant failure. Duh! This is restating the obvious and has no information associated with it other than some very interesting data.  Patients medicated with statins have an increased susceptibility to shingles. I am not joking.

Studies show that people who take cholesterol-lowering statin drugs are at higher risk for developing shingles. “A possible reason,” says Dr. Cohen, “is that statins may affect the immune system.”  For further info confirming this:

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/9/2/e022897

A wide range of viruses ranging from Herpes to Covid to  oncoviruses ( cancer causing) typically target mitochondria once they have gained entry to a cell. The reason is simple, mitochondria control cell death ( apoptosis ) and will cause the cell to commit suicide in response to infection.

Shutting down the cell, the apoptotic response to something going wrong within a cell, is an integral part of the basic immune response to infection (and indeed of the termination of cancerous cell too).

Mitochondrial morphological changes occur as virus Herpes Zoster virus reactivation progresses showing that front line defence against reactivation is being compromised.

So, readers of my posts will be already aware of what comes next:

Statin medication affects mitochondrial health through alteration of cholesterol availability. Lowered mitochondrial health sometimes  leads to apoptosis of muscle cells in some individuals ( muscle pain, sarcopenia) and in others or even the same people  lower immune surveillance of endogenous viruses such as herpes zoster, ie they get shingles.

One in four should expect to get shingles!. What are the figures for those over 60 on statins? A tsunami of statin related health outcomes are coming our way

post script: 

I have just had my shingles vaccination (the recombinant vaccine not the live vaccine) and I am v happy with this especially when a little more research informs me that the vaccine helps protect against dementia. Another 'what!!'  It seems like it does not matter if it's the live or recombinant vaccine, both work. But why? No mechanisms are proposed. 

I have a mechanism. Shingles are linked to statin use. My proposition is that the nerve cells invaded by the resurging Herpes Zoster virus are made disproportionally vulnerable by statin use ( unsuprising maybe given how much cholestrol is needed in the myelinated axon's insulation sheath)  So in the shingles v dementia findings it is simpler to see shingles as a vulnerability sympton rather than a cause of nerve deterioation. Yes, the net is closing in around statins' unforseen consequences.