United States: The viral disease has had quite a significant impact on global health and new studies are suggesting a very grim correlation between COVID-19 and the brain. Scientists are studying the long-term effects of COVID-19 and asking an important question: Does COVID cause dementia?
Right from the first wave of the pandemic COVID-19 has been known to affect the brains in several ways. Patients reported a range of neurological symptoms, including:
- Loss of smell (anosmia)
- Cognitive sluggishness
- Persistent headaches
- Confusion and delirium
- Increased risk of stroke
As reported by the dailygalaxy.com, these symptoms, at first believed to be fleeting, have continued in many patients resulting in what is now referred to as “long COVID”. The cardinal features of this post viral condition include brain fog, depression and cognitive slowing which has severely affected the working capability and general functioning ability of patients.
Scientists presently have come into worry how these neuroses remain and act as precursors of extended deep enfeeblement. The correlation between COVID-19 and dementia is under study by experts as scientists attempt to discover all aspects of a virus on the brain.
Burying the neurological consequence
A latest study undertaken on 203 COVID-19 survivors in the UK has given the world the first hard evidence that coronavirus attacks the brain. By comparing brain scans taken before and after the pandemic’s onset, researchers made a startling discovery: these were findings of neurological damage and early onset dementia in patients regardless of how severe their Covid illness may have been some months before.
The investigators found that within the cerebral cortex the olfactory area received the greatest impact of the radiation. This finding is consistent with one of the characteristics of COVID19 patients is anosmia and raises questions over the possibility of the virus infiltrating and maybe causing harm to important parts of the brain.
While these neurological alterations align with symptoms of Havana Syndrome, a condition that affects diplomats and other officials, the sudden onset of the ailments tightly mirrors the more catastrophic presentation of Havana Syndrome observed in the final days of the Obama administration’s diplomatic relationship with Cuba.
The fact that the causes of the two may be different, it may sound an alarm for the general public, because they both affect the brain one way or the other.