COVID can shrink patients’ brains

Of the myriad ways that COVID-19 affects the body, one of the most surprising and worrying is that it can shrink the brain.

A study published in the journal Nature this week used MRI images taken before and during the pandemic to compare morphological changes in the brains of people who recovered from mostly mild COVID cases with those who had not. contracted.

The researchers identified COVID-associated brain damage months after infection, including in the part related to smell, and atrophy equivalent to a decade of normal aging.

The changes were also linked to cognitive decline, according to the study by researchers at the Wellcome Center for Integrative Neuroimaging at the University of Oxford.

On the one hand, “that sounds very scary,” said co-author Gwenaëlle Douaud in an interview. On the other, she said, no one yet knows what that means for the future of COVID survivors, and whether the biological shock inflicted by the coronavirus will cause people to suffer from dementia and other life-shortening chronic neurodegenerative conditions years or decades later.

Several studies have shown that SARS-CoV-2 infection can cause significant neurological and psychological symptoms, putting patients at risk of anxiety, depression and a host of other mental health problems for up to a year after developing acute illness .

But, as Douaud points out, the brain is “plastic,” meaning that it is capable of reorganizing itself by forming new neural connections to compensate for injury. There is also emerging evidence that injured brain cells can be repaired under the right conditions to help restore functionality.

While more research is needed to determine the long-term impact of COVID-19 on the central nervous system and other systems, public health officials caution that the best way to prevent prolonged COVID is to avoid contracting it. Several studies have shown that two doses of the vaccine can reduce the risk of prolonged symptoms of subsequent infection by up to 60%.