2024-09-30 13:52:29
An infection with the coronavirus can have far-reaching and fatal consequences. Now researchers have examined the effects on the brain.
So far, almost 39 million infections with the coronavirus have been officially reported in Germany. The number of unreported cases is likely to be even higher. Some of these infections were severe. By the end of 2023, 2.8 million infected people had to be treated in hospital, around 500,000 of them in intensive care. Such a serious infection can have fatal consequences. It is estimated that up to two million infected people suffer from Long Covid.
Symptoms include exhaustion and low resilience (“fatigue syndrome”), muscle pain, shortness of breath, depression and anxiety. But it also includes neurological problems (e.g. memory and word-finding problems), changes in taste and smell, visual and hearing impairments, cardiovascular diseases and impairments of the gastrointestinal tract.
British researchers have now examined the after-effects of Corona on the brain in the largest study to date. With a frightening result: a severe infection ages the brain by 20 years.
It shows that patients have poorer cognitive performance than comparable control subjects twelve to 18 months after hospitalization for Covid-19. Scans showed that brain volume was reduced in key areas and the researchers found unusually high levels of brain injury proteins in the blood.
The study author Dr. Greta Wood explains in the science magazine “Sci Tech Daily”: “After being hospitalized for Covid-19, many people report persistent cognitive symptoms, often referred to as ‘brain fog.’ In this latest study, we examined 351 Covid-19 patients who were hospitalized with and without new neurological complications. We found that both those with and without acute neurological complications […] had poorer cognitive performance than would be expected for their age, gender and education level, based on 3,000 controls.”
These cognitive deficits appear to correspond to 20 years of normal aging. The researchers emphasize that these are patients who had to be hospitalized because of Corona. The results should not be generalized to all people with Covid experience.
However, the extent of the deficits in all cognitive abilities tested and the links to brain injury in the brain scans and blood tests provided the clearest evidence yet that Covid-19 continues to have significant effects on brain and mind health long after breathing problems have subsided can.
Study co-author Benedict Michael (Professor of Neuroscience) explains: “Covid-19 is not just a lung disease. It is often the patients who are most severely affected who also suffer from brain complications.”
And his colleague Gerome Breen emphasizes: “Long-term research is now essential to find out how these patients recover or who may have their condition worsening, and to determine whether this is unique to Covid-19 or brain damage common in other infections is.”