THE ESSENTIAL
- A severe form of Covid-19 is linked to changes in the brain that are similar to those seen in old age.
- Brain aging linked to the coronavirus is thought to be caused by inflammation.
If Covid-19 is mainly a respiratory disease, many neurological symptoms have been listed in patients such as brain fog, difficulty concentrating or even memory loss. According to a study published in the scientific journal Nature Aging on December 5, 2022, the pathology could also be linked to brain aging.
Severe Covid: molecular signatures of aging in the brain
Researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), affiliated with Harvard University, have shown that many biological pathways that change during natural brain aging show similar changes in patients who have had severe Covid-19. .
“Our study is the first to show that Covid-19 is associated with the molecular signatures of brain aging”explained co-author Maria Mavrikaki, professor of pathology at BIDMC and Harvard Medical School. “We found striking similarities between the brains of patients with Covid-19 and those of the elderly.”
The scientist and her team came to this conclusion after analyzing a total of 54 tissue samples from the frontal cortex of adults between the ages of 22 and 85 taken post-mortem. 21 samples came from severe Covid-19 patients and one from an asymptomatic patient. They were compared with those of people who had not contracted the disease and had no neurological history. Samples from a control group that had been in intensive care were also used for this experiment.
“We observed that gene expression in the brain tissue of deceased Covid-19 patients closely resembled that of uninfected people 71 years of age or older.”said Dr. Jonathan Lee, co-author of the research.
“Although we found no evidence that the Sars-CoV-2 virus was present in brain tissue at the time of death, we did find inflammatory patterns associated with Covid-19. This suggests that this inflammation may contribute to the aging-like effects observed in the brains of patients with Covid-19 and long Covid”he adds.
Neurological follow-up recommended for patients with severe Covid
For the researchers, this work, confirming the link between the coronavirus and cerebral aging, should lead to rethinking the care of patients affected by Sars-CoV-2.
“Given these results, we advocate for neurological follow-up of recovered Covid-19 patients”said lead author Dr. Frank Slack, director of the Institute for RNA Medicine at BIDMC
In his articlehe also advocates recommending that these patients modify the behaviors associated with dementia factors such as controlling weight or avoiding excessive alcohol consumption in order to reduce the risk of developing neurological pathologies linked to aging.