Covid-19: a serious form of the disease would age the brain, according to a study

If, fortunately, most people affected by Covid-19 escape unscathed, without after-effects, we now know that infection by Sars-CoV2, the Covid virus, can severely impact the body, and leave traces in certain organs. Among the most frequently reported is brain fog, a cerebral complication of Covid.

Here, a new study has not only made it possible toobserve brain damage present following a serious form of Covid-19, but it also made it possible to encrypt them. Published in the magazine Nature Medicine (Source 1), the study was carried out by British researchers from the University of Liverpool, King’s College London and the University of Cambridge, as part of the COVID-CNS Consortium.

Covid, a disease that is not only respiratory

The study, carried out on 351 patients hospitalized for Covid-19 and 2,927 so-called “control” non-covid patients, reveals that, 12 to 18 months after hospitalization, the “covid” patients had less cognitive functions. good than the participants in the control group. Results correlated with a reduction in brain volume covid people, and abnormally high blood levels of proteins linked to brain damage.

“It is striking to note that the post-Covid cognitive deficits observed in this study were equivalent to twenty years of normal aging”, write the researchers in a press release (source 2). The team adds nuance, recalling “that these were patients who had suffered from Covid, requiring hospitalization”, and that consequently, “these results should not be too broadly generalized to all people who have had a lived experience of Covid”.

However, the extent of the brain deficit observed, in all the cognitive skills tested, associated with the brain lesions observed on imaging and blood analyzes “provide the clearest evidence yet that Covid may have significant impacts on brain and mind health long after respiratory problems have healed”, estimate the scientists. In view of these observations, proving the brain fog described by many people, researchers believe that Covid is not only a lung and respiratory disease.

It remains to be seen how these patients cognitively affected by their severe form of Covid recover in the long term, and whether this phenomenon is also observed for other related pathologies, such as seasonal flu. And to find a way to prevent the Covid virus from causing such damage to the brain.