Carly M. Rose, MS, a Biomedical & Health Informatics graduate student in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, studying under the CADRC Data Management and Statistics Core (DMSC) co-investigator Dana Crawford, has been selected to deliver a short talk at the Keystone Symposia on Closing the Data Gap in Global Genomics, Medicine & Population Health, to be held April 27–30, 2026, in Hannover, Germany. Rose's presentation is scheduled for April 29th as part of the conference session on "Deep and Latent Phenotyping."

Rose will present findings from a large-scale, multi-institutional study examining how COVID-19 infection and the shingles vaccine (Shingrix) independently and jointly influence the risk of late-onset Alzheimer disease (LOAD) in older adults. The study leverages the National Clinical Cohort Collaborative (N3C) COVID-19 Enclave, a powerful research database that combines electronic health records from more than 80 U.S. healthcare systems, encompassing over 24 million patients and 36 billion medical records.

By analyzing the health records of approximately 1.5 million patients aged 65 and older, Rose and colleagues found that COVID-19 infection was associated with a 13% increased risk of new cases of late-onset Alzheimer disease (LOAD), while the Shingrix vaccination was associated with a 29% reduced risk. Further analysis suggests that while these effects are independent and opposing, COVID-19 infection may weaken some of the protective benefits of the shingles vaccine. These findings suggest that getting the shingles vaccine and avoiding COVID-19 infection in later life may help reduce the risk of developing late-onset Alzheimer disease over at least a five-year period.

This work highlights the power of using large, combined health datasets to answer urgent clinical and public health questions that single-hospital studies cannot. Abstract co-authors also include CWRU’s William S. Bush, PhD, Jonathan L. Haines, PhD (Data Management and Statistics Core Leader), Shiying Liu, PhD, Scott M. Williams, PhD, and Dana C. Crawford, PhD (Rose’s mentor).