British research shows that even people with mild Covid-19 have a small shrinking part of their brain.
Many people with Covid-19 with mild symptoms often feel comfortable and reassured that they do not need to be hospitalized for treatment.
However, research shows that brain scans have shown that even cases of Covid-19 can shrink part of the brain, causing physical changes equivalent to 10 years of aging. The exact cause of this problem is not yet known.
According to the India Times, some of the most compelling evidence of post-Covid-19 brain and neurological damage in people with mild disease comes from British researchers. They studied brain changes before and after Covid-19 in the participants.
The study included 785 participants, ages 51 to 81, whose brains were scanned before the Covid-19 pandemic broke out. After that, they had a brain scan every 3 years on average. This is part of a medical project that is scanning for a health database for disease monitoring, the UK Biobank.
According to medical records, 401 of these volunteers were infected with SARS-CoV-2. Most patients had mild infections, and only 15 had to be hospitalized.
The results showed that 4.5 months after contracting Covid-19 with mild symptoms, patients had lost an average of 0.2-2% brain volume and had thinner gray matter than healthy people. Participants infected with SARS-CoV-2 took 8-12% longer in 2 tests measuring attention, visual inspection and processing speed.
Jacques Hugon, a neuroscientist at the Lariboisière Hospital at the University of Paris (France), said it remains unclear whether the brain will regenerate itself or whether the patient will recover even if consciousness is restored. The damage caused by Covid-19 in the brain can also progress to various neurodegenerative disorders.
Covid-19 can trigger a severe immune response, leading to a cytokine storm that amplifies inflammation throughout the body. Prolonged inflammation can promote cognitive decline and neurodegenerative diseases.
Some scientists even fear that people who have recovered from Covid-19 are at a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, based on evidence that a protein called beta-amyloid appears in the brains of young patients who died of Covid-19. .
Some studies also show evidence that SARS-CoV-2 enters the brain. In it, the US National Institutes of Health study illustrates how SARS-CoV-2 can spread beyond the lungs and airways. This suggests that the immune system’s inability to clear the virus from the body could be a possible cause of persistent Covid-19 symptoms, including brain fog.
@ Sing News