As you age, staying on top of your health is more important than ever, and that means doing everything you can to protect yourself from preventable illnesses. And the simplest, most powerful way to do that is to stay current on your vaccines.
Because your immune system naturally weakens with age, vaccines are a crucial line of defense against serious diseases such as shingles and pneumonia, says Robert Hopkins, M.D., medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID) and professor of internal medicine at the University of Arkans
Yet many older adults aren’t getting the vaccines they need, putting themselves at unnecessary risk. A 2021 AARP survey found that about half of older adults don’t get all of their recommended vaccines, and 11 percent get none at all.
Hopkins believes many older adults hesitate due to safety concerns and because they want more information. So here’s what you need to know about which vaccines you need, how they work, why they are safe, how to minimize side effects, and much more.
BENEFITS OF VACCINES FOR OLDER ADULTS
1. Why you need vaccines
Vaccines are a powerful tool of modern medicine, protecting you from diseases that once caused widespread suffering and death. For instance, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the introduction of the measles vaccine in 1963 led to a 97 percent drop in cases between 1965 and 1968, and according to the World Health Organization, measles vaccination saved an estimated 60 million lives between 2000 and 2023..
“The reason why so many of us are healthy is because of vaccines,” says Sharon Brangman, M.D., chair of the department of geriatrics at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York, and co-principal investigator for the American Geriatrics Society’s Older Adults Vaccine Initiative.
Rolling up your sleeve protects your health and contributes to herd immunity, safeguarding vulnerable populations like infants and those with weakened immune systems.
2. Your immune system weakens with age
As we age, our immune system naturally weakens in a process called immunosenescence, Brangman explains. Older adults are also more likely to have other health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease or high blood pressure that make it harder for the body to fight infection. Those changes put older adults at higher risk from common illnesses like influenza and pneumonia, potentially leading to severe complications or even death. That’s why it’s crucial for older adults to get all of their shots on time, Brangman says.
3. Vaccines reduce the risk of complications
Even when vaccines don’t prevent illness completely, they significantly reduce the likelihood of serious complications. A 2021 study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that hospitalized adults who got the flu vaccine were 26 percent less likely to be admitted to the intensive care unit and 31 percent less likely to die from the flu compared to those who were unvaccinated.
4. Vaccines may help prevent dementia
In addition to protecting you from the near-term impacts of diseases, a growing body of research suggests vaccines may help stave off dementia. In a 2022 study, University of Texas researchers found that getting an annual flu shot was associated with a 40 percent decrease in the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. And a 2021 study, published in The Journals of Gerontology, Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, found that the Tdap vaccination was associated with a 42 percent lower dementia risk. “These viruses cause inflammation of the nerves in the brain,” Brangman explains, and that can “start the process of nerve cell death, which is what happens in Alzheimer’s disease."
5. Vaccines may lower heart attack and stroke risk
Research suggests vaccines may also lower the risk of cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes. A 2022 JAMA Network Open meta-analysis of six studies covering more than 9,000 patients showed that people who received a flu vaccine had a 34 percent lower risk of a major cardiovascular event over the next 12 months. Another study, published in January 2024, found that older adults who got the most recent COVID-19 booster shot had a 47 percent lower risk of strokes, blood clots and heart attacks compared to those who just received the original vaccine. Vaccines help lower inflammation, a key contributor to heart disease.
6. How vaccines work
Scientists have developed various types of vaccines to fight disease. Although they work in different ways, they all spark an immune response, training your body to protect itself against harmful germs. Here are the most common types of vaccines in the U.S.:
- Inactivated vaccines, like most flu vaccines, contain viruses that are killed or inactivated.
- Live attenuated vaccines, like the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, use weakened forms of the virus to boost immunity.
- Subunit, recombinant, polysaccharide or conjugate vaccines use specific pieces of the germ, such as its protein or casing, to help your immune system recognize and fight it. Examples include shingles, Hepatitis B and pneumonia vaccines.
- Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, such as the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines, use genetic material to instruct cells to produce a protein that triggers an immune response.
UNDERSTANDING THE SCIENCE
7. Vaccines are rigorously tested and monitored for safety
All approved vaccines — including those that receive emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — undergo extensive study and review before they are allowed to be used, says Gregory Poland, M.D., an infectious disease physician at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and director of Mayo’s vaccine research group. This was the case specifically with the COVID-19 vaccine. Manufacturers must conduct clinical trials on thousands of people and prove the vaccine works for different groups, including breakdowns by sex, race/ethnicity and age. The data is then examined by a panel of scientific advisers who make recommendations to the FDA and the CDC.
After approval, federal agencies continue to monitor vaccines for any adverse effects, using multiple systems that scrutinize different types of data to ensure safety, Poland says. America’s safety monitoring systems “are the best that I know of in the world,” Poland says, “because there’s a series of them, and there’s some redundancy built into them, so you don't get a bias.” Poland notes that the systems quickly picked up on a rare side effect, a certain type of heart inflammation, in adolescent boys who had received the COVID vaccine — proof, he says, that the system worked.
8. Getting a vaccine is safer than getting sick with the disease
You’re much more likely to be seriously harmed by a vaccine-preventable disease than by a vaccine, Brangman says. Consider it: Shingles can cause blindness, long-term nerve damage and brain inflammation; tetanus can cause painful muscle spasms, difficulty breathing and blood clots; and respiratory illnesses like the flu or pneumonia can be deadly for older adults. Without vaccines, we’d see far more hospitalizations and deaths, according to Brangman.
9. No association between vaccines and autism
There is no evidence of a link between any vaccine and autism or autistic disorders, Hopkins says. A single study, which has since been discredited, reported such an association in 1998 in a British medical journal called The Lancet. Twelve years later, in 2010, The Lancet retracted the study, saying several elements of the paper were false.
The original study included only 12 children who were carefully selected by the researchers, according to a 2010 investigation by Britain’s General Medical Council. The council also found that study author Andrew Wakefield’s research was funded by lawyers acting for parents suing vaccine manufacturers. Saying Wakefield acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly,” the council found him guilty of serious professional misconduct.
Since Wakefield’s study, the misconception that vaccines cause autism “has been debunked with multiple studies,” Hopkins says. Dozens of well-designed analyses published in medical journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine, PLos One and The Lancet have found no increased risk of autism from vaccination.
10. Serious side effects are extremely rare
Serious side effects after vaccination are extremely rare, says Poland. For example, a 2021 study found the rate of myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, was 5.8 cases of myocarditis per million second COVID-19 doses in adults. Other studies show that the risk of myocarditis from contracting COVID-19 is significantly higher, and that the vast majority of people who develop myocarditis after vaccination fully recover. Medical providers say the overall benefits of vaccination far outweigh these minimal risks.
11. The vaccine can’t give you the disease it prevents
The vaccines recommended for older adults in the U.S., including those for COVID-19, pneumonia, shingles and the flu, do not contain the live virus, so it’s impossible to get the disease from those shots, Brangman says. One influenza vaccine approved for use in the U.S. contains a live and weakened virus — the nasal spray vaccine called FluMist — but it is not recommended for those who are 50 and older.
12. Not all reported health issues are caused by vaccines
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) gives people a place to report health issues after vaccination, regardless of whether the vaccine caused the problem. While anti-vaccination groups use VAERS data to spread misinformation, the system is not designed to prove vaccines cause harm. Instead, it serves as a “canary in the mine” for potential side effects that require further investigation, Poland says. “It gives us a real-time quick snapshot if there is a potential problem. It doesn’t tell us there is a problem.” VAERS reports can be inaccurate, duplicated or incomplete, and events may be coincidental, so vaccine researchers say you shouldn’t draw conclusions from their data.
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