Understanding 'Long Covid': The Lingering Effects of Covid-19 on the Body and Brain

2023-11-20 14:01:38

Although Covid-19 seems far away, there are still people who still suffer from it and suffer the consequences beyond its main symptoms such as cough, low saturation, breathing problems, loss of smell and muscle pain.

Over these three years, scientists have found that the virus can leave persistent residues in the body for weeks or months after it attacks the body. A phenomenon called ‘long Covid’ and that can vary in the display of its symptoms, as it can include respiratory compromise or neuropsychiatric symptoms such as ‘brain fog’.

According to the American library of the ‘National Center for Biotechnology Information’, this last condition is related to the neurological implications that the chronic appearance of Sars-CoV-2 can cause.

(You may be interested in: ‘Prolonged Covid’, the uncertain challenge that already leaves millions of people affected).

“Alterations in brain functioning, especially in regions associated with cognition, may result from infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2),” the entity notes in its repository.

Although little is known about this condition, experts have been able to identify that it presents symptoms related to lack of concentration and in some cases memory loss, such as difficulty finding words and attention problems.

According to Mitchell Elkind, a treating neurologist in the Stroke Service at NewYork Presbyterian, it is believed that these conditions are due to prolonged covid, since they appear once the virus has been present in the body.

“After patients recover from typical Covid-19 symptoms, such as fever, cough or shortness of breath, they develop this persistent brain fog. Many of these patients have not had a stroke or brain infection, have not suffered seizures or anything that was neurologically obvious during their coronavirus infection, but they are presenting an alteration in their cognition,” says the expert in an interview with the hospital’s information portal.

@shotsdeciencia One of the most unexpected symptoms that COVID brought with it was the so-called “brain fog,” a series of cognitive and neurological alterations that include confusion and difficulty concentrating and performing tasks that were usually trivial. Why happens? Although it is difficult to determine a single reason and clearly understand what is behind it, a recent article has begun to clarify the underlying causes of this “fog” by studying the effects of COVID infection on brain cells. Find out the details here. If you like what we do, share this post and consider supporting us on Patreon: patreon.com/shotsdeciencia Ref https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)00713-9 #science #science #scicomm #brain #brainfog #fogmental #fog #virus #brain #covid19 ♬ original sound – Shots de Ciencia

What are scientists doing?

According to a 2021 publication in the journal of Neurology Argentina, in addition to the symptoms described above, difficulty with executive function, insomnia, migraine, and neuropathic symptoms may also be included, among others.

For this reason, a group of scientists from Yale University has carried out a recent study to investigate the main cause of persistent covid at a cognitive level, in order to obtain some indication that will allow us to find a solution to brain fog.

(Keep reading: Carolina Gaitán suffered a painful illness after having covid: It was a very complex stage’).

To do this, the researchers gathered 37 people with a history of Covid who presented mental confusion, cognitive impairment and excessive fatigue after contracting it.

The results were not very encouraging, since it was found that Sars apparently did not cause a symptom on a physical level.

However, the results were not very encouraging, since it was found that Sars apparently did not cause a physical symptom in the brain that would give signs of why those affected present those symptoms.

“When comparing individuals with neuro-PCC to control participants who had never had COVID-19, we found no evidence of neuroinflammation or blood-brain barrier dysfunction suggesting that central disease persistence is not a major driver of COVID-19.” prolonged neurological damage,” says the study published in the ‘Journal of the American Medical Association’.

(Read also: New vaccines against Covid launched in the United States: they are made against new variants).

Although the main reason remains unknown, the authors of the study affirm that these results are an aid in ruling out wrong hypotheses that will rule out multiple possibilities.

“We still don’t know what is causing neurological persistent covid, but we hope that with more studies, we can at least eliminate the incorrect theories,” said Shelli Farhadian, one of the authors of the research in a statement.