COVID-19 patients commonly report having headaches, confusion and other neurological symptoms, but doctors don’t fully understand how the disease targets the brain during infection.
Scientists from Tulane University found in detail how COVID-19 affects the brain.
They found severe brain inflammation and injury consistent with reduced blood flow or oxygen to the brain, including neuron damage and death. They also found small bleeds in the brain.
Surprisingly, these findings were present in patients that did not experience severe respiratory disease from the virus.
The research is published in Nature Communications and was conducted by Tracy Fischer et al.
In the study, the team examined the brain tissue of several patients that had been infected.
The initial findings documenting the extent of damage seen in the brain due to SARS-CoV-2 infection were so striking that she spent the next year further refining the study controls to ensure that the results were clearly attributable to the infection.
Because the people didn’t experience significant respiratory symptoms, no one expected them to have the severity of disease that we found in the brain.
But the findings were distinct and profound, and undeniably a result of the infection.
The findings are also consistent with autopsy studies of people who have died of COVID-19, suggesting that nonhuman primates may serve as an appropriate model, or proxy, for how humans experience the disease.
Neurological complications are often among the first symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection and can be the most severe and persistent.
They also affect people indiscriminately—all ages, with and without comorbidities, and with varying degrees of disease severity.
The team hopes that this and future studies that investigate how SARS-CoV-2 affects the brain will contribute to the understanding and treatment of patients suffering from the neurological consequences of COVID-19 and long COVID.
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If you care about Covid, please read studies about inexpensive heart drug that can help treat severe COVID-19, and findings of which COVID vaccine elicits the strongest immune responses.
For more information about brain health, please see recent studies about common food that may reduce vascular disease in the brain, and results showing these common foods may sharp your brain.
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