Strokes and mental state changes hint at how COVID-19 harms the brain

Admin on 08 / 10 / 2020 under #COVID-19

New clues emerge about relatively rare, but potentially severe, neurological symptoms

COVID-19 cases described by U.K. doctors offer a sharper view of the illness’s possible effects on the brain. Strokes, confusion and psychosis were found among a group of 125 people hospitalized with infections of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus behind the pandemic.

   
The results, described June 25 in Lancet Psychiatry, come from a group of severely sick people, so they can’t answer how common these types of neurological symptoms may be in a more general population. Still, these details bring scientists closer to better understanding COVID-19.

Brain-related symptoms of COVID-19 patients can slip through the cracks. “These relatively rare but incredibly severe complications get missed, like needles in a haystack,” says Benedict Michael, a neurologist at the University of Liverpool in England. So he and his colleagues designed a survey to uncover these symptoms. 

in mental state, including confusion, personality change or depression. Eighteen of 37 patients with altered mental states were younger than 60. So far, it’s unclear exactly how SARS-CoV-2 causes these symptoms.

The results address the range of neurological symptoms that doctors are seeing, but big questions remain about how the virus affects the brain (SN: 6/12/20). “Now that we know the rough idea of the scale of this, we desperately need research that gets to the disease mechanisms,” Michael says.