Most COVID cases develop chronic neurological symptoms including confusion, brain fog, headaches, encephalitis, stroke, dementia, neuropathy, muscle and nerve damage.
Eight of 10 hospitalized COVID-19 patients developed neurologic complications and were six times more likely than their peers to die, according to early results from a global the study Global Incidence of Neurological Manifestations Among Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19 published in JAMA.
The most common symptoms were loss of smell (43%), weakness (40%), fatigue (38%), loss of taste (37%), muscle pain (25%), depression (23%), headache (21%), and anxiety (16%). The researchers also identified major but less common neurologic disorders such as ischemic stroke (1.9%), hemorrhagic stroke (0.4%), and seizures (0.06%).
Among the few nonhospitalized COVID-19 patients with mild illness in the dataset, neurologic and psychiatric symptoms were still common, with 55% reporting fatigue, 52% loss of smell, 47% muscle pain, 45% loss of taste, and 44% headache.
In a University College London news release, lead study author Jonathan Rogers, BChir, said his team had expected neurologic and psychiatric symptoms to be more common in severe COVID-19. “But instead we found that some symptoms appeared to be more common in mild cases,” he said. “It appears that COVID-19 affecting mental health and the brain is the norm, rather than the exception.”
“Months after a bout with COVID-19, many people are still struggling with memory problems, mental fog and mood changes. One reason is that the disease can cause long-term harm to the brain. The current catalog of COVID-related threats to the brain includes bleeding, blood clots, inflammation, oxygen deprivation and disruption of the protective blood-brain barrier. And there’s new evidence in monkeys that the virus may also directly infect and kill certain brain cells,” From blood clots to infected neurons, how COVID threatens the brain
“It’s very clear in our monkey model that neurons are infected,” says Morrison, who presented some of the research at the Society for Neuroscience meeting.
In a 2022 study, the University of Oxford found “Increased risk of some neurological and psychiatric disorders remains two years after COVID-19 infection” even if you have been vaccinated. (Neurological and psychiatric risk trajectories after SARS-CoV-2 infection: an analysis of 2-year retrospective cohort studies including 1,284,437 patients) “New diagnoses of disorders including psychosis, dementia, seizures and ‘brain fog’ remain commoner two years after COVID-19.”
“Some of the theories for what may be causing long-COVID symptoms include the persistence of the virus. So, instead of the virus coming and going, it sticks around causing inflammation, auto-immune problems and changes in the microbiome,” Dr. Michael Peluso, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco said.
“You can start thinking about getting COVID as almost an accelerant to aging. The viral infection accelerates the aging process in people,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, director of the Clinical Epidemiology Center at Washington University in St. Louis and the chief of research and education service at Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System.
Dr. Al-Aly researched data from millions of people across the country. The studies on kidney outcomes in long COVID, long COVID in the brain and long COVID in the heart had similar patterns.
Other Chronic Conditions of the Brain
In 2023 the Journal Cortex published the study, Persistent Prosopagnosia Following COVID-19
COVID-19 can cause psychological problems including loss of smell and taste, long-lasting memory, speech, and language impairments, and psychosis. Here, we provide the first report of prosopagnosia following symptoms consistent with COVID-19. Annie is a 28-year-old woman who had normal face recognition prior to contracting COVID-19 in March 2020. Two months later, she noticed face recognition difficulties while experiencing symptom relapses and her deficits with faces have persisted.
Long-term neurologic outcomes of COVID-19