Researchers from UMC Utrecht and Amsterdam UMC have found inflammation throughout the brains of two patients with long-term complaints after a corona infection. This is the first time that this has been shown in living people with lung covid, but additional research is still needed.
Several studies are currently being conducted into the relationship between lung covid and specific organs such as the heart or the respiratory muscle. So now, for the first time, brain damage has been demonstrated in living people.
“We would like to know why people have symptoms of fatigue and cognitive complaints for so long after a coronavirus infection,” says nuclear medicine doctor Bart van Berckel of Amsterdam UMC. “The fact that we now see inflammation throughout the brain is striking and there may be a connection between lung covid and that global brain inflammation. Hopefully a study with a larger number of patients will provide more clarity on this.”
inflammation
The two patients who have now been examined are a man who was in intensive care and is partly back to work and a younger female patient who had mild corona complaints and is still on sick leave. The researchers found brain inflammation throughout the brain in both. The inflammations were increased 76 and 121 percent, respectively, compared to that in the brains of healthy people.
The patients were examined with an advanced and expensive scan that showed the inflammatory response. The researchers are now thinking about ways to make such a scan more accessible to more patients, because the scan is not yet available in regular care. “At the moment it is not possible to request such a scan from a general practitioner or hospital,” says nuclear medicine doctor Nelleke Tolboom of UMC Utrecht. “A selection of patients has already been made for additional research. You cannot sign up for this.”
Additional research
There are still a number of questions that remain with the researchers. For example, it is still unknown how patients with these inflammations can be treated and it is not yet clear whether every patient with lung covid has the same inflammatory reactions. Additional research is therefore needed to find out. The first study has appeared in preprint and can be viewed here.