Brain Damage from Coronavirus Even in Mild Cases
The coronavirus doesn't just target our lungs.
A growing body of research shows that COVID-19 is linked to potentially fatal brain damage and neurological problems.
According to a study published Wednesday in the journal Brain, some coronavirus patients experience brain swelling that's accompanied by episodes of delirium.
Coronavirus-related strokes can happen regardless of a patient's age. Patients in the study – including a 27-year-old woman with mild coronavirus symptoms – had strokes caused by blood clots in their brains.
Other recent research also found that even young patients with mild COVID-19 cases could experience blood-clot-related complications like strokes. In April, a group of doctors in New York City reported that five coronavirus patients in their 30s and 40s, most of whom had no past medical history, experienced life-threatening strokes and had to go to the hospital.
Similarly, a study of 214 COVID-19 patients at three hospitals in Wuhan, China, found that 36 percent had neurological symptoms like impaired consciousness or cerebrovascular diseases, including strokes. That research is not yet peer-reviewed, however.
The authors of the new study suggest that doctors should follow up with recovered coronavirus patients to "ascertain the long-term consequences of this pandemic".
Zandi's team and other researchers are concerned that some brain-damage issues may not manifest for some time after patients have left the hospital.
"My worry is that we have millions of people with COVID-19 now. And if in a year's time we have 10 million recovered people, and those people have cognitive deficits … then that's going to affect their ability to work and their ability to go about activities of daily living," Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist who was not involved in the study, told Reuters.
This is similar to a phenomenon observed in the decades following the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic: Between 1917 and the 1930s, more than 1 million people were diagnosed with encephalitis lethargica, or "the sleepy sickness."
The disorder, caused by swelling in the brain, brought excessive sleepiness and severe neurodegeneration that left some patients disabled.
"It's a concern if some hidden epidemic could occur after COVID where you're going to see delayed effects on the brain, because there could be subtle effects on the brain and slowly things happen over the coming years, but it's far too early for us to judge now," Zandi told The Guardian.
Still, he told Reuters, some scientists are worried that the coronavirus could bring about an epidemic of "brain damage linked to the pandemic".