Researchers In Joint Study Covid-19, In Conjunction With Other Factors, May Accelerate Brain Disease

Researchers in India and Spain investigated in a study the effects on cognitive impairment of 14 patients with pre-existing dementia, who showed accelerated cognitive deterioration after contracting covid-19. The discovery of this is part of the various late consequences of the disease, reported by patients, and which have had great demands in the area of ​​medicine.

“What these researchers from India showed is that, in a group of 14 patients with brain degenerative conditions ranging from Alzheimer’s disease, cerebrovascular disease, frontotemporal degeneration — which is another type of dementia — and some cases of Parkinson’s disease, the what was observed is that lately, that is, one year after the covid infection, it was possible to observe complications from that condition”, says Orestes Forlenza , professor of the Department of Psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine of USP, with specialization in Geriatric Psychiatry at the University from London.

Explaining the phenomenon
The combination of pre-existing dementia, contracting the virus and the long period of social isolation results in relevant cognitive losses, as Forlenza explains: “These deprivations [of isolation] took their toll, but this affects people regardless of whether they have had covid or no. What this study shows is that the behavioral consequences of the pandemic, adding to this the fact that having had covid somehow influenced the disease process that was ongoing, manifested itself in a more pronounced cognitive loss.”

The professor also points to the importance of understanding covid-19 as a systemic disease and not just a lung one, that is, a disease that affects the entire body and can reach the human brain, accelerating pathogenic processes. “Let’s think about Alzheimer’s disease, where one of the causative mechanisms is the accumulation of beta-amyloid, a protein particle that accumulates and has a series of toxic actions on brain tissue. What was seen is that the presence of infection markers, whether the virus itself or inflammatory markers associated with the infection, in a way accentuate the expression of this process, that is, there is an increase in amyloid formation, an increase in its pathogenicity .” This acceleration in the course of the disease may or may not be reversible, depending on the case.

Awareness
Forlenza comments that up to 50% of people who have had covid may have persistent cognitive complaints. These complaints are not just neurological, but also psychiatric: “A large number of these individuals also have depressive symptoms, persistent anxiety symptoms, and so on,” she says.

Therefore, the specialist argues that there is an awareness of the late impacts of covid-19 on various body systems. “Even mild forms of covid, which did not require hospitalization, can also have this late neuropsychiatric outcome, that is, it is an infection that affects other tissues in our body and causes possible damage to its balance.”