Patients with COVID-19 disease often report headaches, confusion and other neurological symptoms, but doctors don’t fully understand how the disease targets the brain during infection.
Now researchers from Tulane University have shown in detail how COVID-19 affects the central nervous system, according to a new study published in Nature Communications.
These results constitute the first comprehensive assessment of the neuropathology associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection in a non-human primate model.
The research team found severe brain inflammation and damage 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 subjects who did not suffer severe respiratory illness from the virus.
Tracy Fischer, PhD, principal investigator and associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the Tulane National Primate Research Center, has studied brains for decades. Shortly following the primate center launched its COVID-19 pilot program in the spring of 2020, it began studying brain tissue from several subjects who had been infected.
Ms. Fischer’s initial findings, which document the extent of brain damage from SARS-CoV-2 infection, were so striking that she spent the following year refining her brain tests. the study to make sure the results were clearly attributable to the infection.
“Because the subjects did not show significant respiratory symptoms, no one expected them to show the severity of disease that we saw in the brain,” Fischer said. “But the results were distinct and profound, and were unmistakably the result of infection.”
The findings are also consistent with autopsy studies of people who have died from COVID-19, suggesting that nonhuman primates may serve as a suitable 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 long-lasting. They also affect people without distinction, regardless of age, with or without comorbidity, and with varying degrees of severity.
Fischer hopes that this study and future studies investigating 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.
The COVID-19 pilot research program at Tulane National Primate Research Center was supported by funds made possible by the National Institutes of Health Office of Research Infrastructure Program, Tulane University and Fast Grants.
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Journal reference:
10.1038 / s41467-022-29440-z