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Patients with coronavirus disease (COVID-19) develop symptoms such as a cough, fever, and shortness of breath. COVID-19 has long been known to be a respiratory disease, but as the pandemic evolves, many doctors report different symptoms, suggesting that the virus affects multiple organs, including the brain.
Nearly a third of hospitalized COVID-19 patients experienced some type of altered mental status and function, ranging from delirium to confusion and, in some cases, lack of response, a new study found.
A team of researchers from the Ken & Ruth Davee Department of Neurology, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, aimed to better understand and characterize neurological manifestations, risk factors, and associated outcomes in patients. with COVID-19 who are hospitalized.
They found that of the 509 patients who were studied, 82 percent had neurological manifestations during the course of coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, severe acute respiratory syndrome, including muscle pain, headaches, dizziness, impaired mental function and problems. with your sense of smell and taste.
Image Credit: Northwestern Medicine
The study
To arrive at the study’s findings, which appeared in the Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, Researchers examined neurological manifestations in more than 500 patients who were admitted to a network of hospitals in Chicago, Illinois, due to COVID-19.
The team compared the severity of COVID-19 outcomes in the patients and determined the predictors of any neurological manifestations, encephalopathy, and functional outcome using binary logistic regression.
What did the researchers find?
Study results show that symptoms range from mild to severe, including headaches, dizziness, and impaired mental function. These findings underscore the wide-ranging impacts of the virus on the body. Additionally, the study revealed that patients can continue to experience symptoms even if they have already recovered from the viral infection, which has now sickened more than 35.68 million worldwide.
Image Credit: Northwestern Medicine
Of the more than 500 patients in the study, the team detected early neurological manifestations of COVID-19 in 215 patients, equivalent to 42.2 percent. At hospitalization, these symptoms were observed in 319 patients (62.7 percent) and at any time during the course of the disease in 419 patients (82.3 percent).
The team revealed that the most common neurological symptoms in COVID-19 patients included myalgia, headaches, encephalopathy, dizziness, dysgeusia or distorted sense of taste, and anosmia or loss of smell.
However, strokes, motor and sensory deficits, mobility disorders, seizures, and ataxia were rare.
Encephalopathy, which is defined as damage, malfunction, or disease in the brain, which can lead to mild to severe neurological manifestations, including memory loss, personality changes, altered mental status, confusion, dementia, seizures, coma, or death.
Furthermore, the team found that the independent risk factors in patients for developing any neurological manifestation were severe COVID-19 and younger age.
“This is the first study of its kind in the United States,” said Dr. Igor Koralnik, chief of neuroinfectious diseases and global neurology in the Ken & Ruth Davee Department of Neurology at Northwestern Medicine.
“There are only two other published articles that describe the prevalence of neurological manifestations in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in China and Europe. Our research group spent the summer reviewing the medical records of the first 509 patients hospitalized for COVID-19 within the Northwestern Medicine health system, and our findings show that neurological manifestations are very common in these patients, “he added.
Furthermore, the team found that after discharge from the hospital, only 32.1 percent of encephalopathy patients were able to perform routine daily activities, such as cooking or running errands, such as paying bills. In contrast, 89 percent of patients who did not develop encephalopathy or altered mental function were able to carry out their daily activities without assistance.
There was also higher mortality or death in patients with encephalopathy at 21.7 percent, compared with 3.2 percent of those who did not develop the disease.
“We now seek to characterize the long-term neurological effects of COVID-19 and cognitive outcomes in patients with COVID-19-associated encephalopathy,” said Dr. Koralnik.
“We are studying this in patients who are discharged from the hospital, as well as ‘long-distance carriers’ of COVID-19, who have never been hospitalized but also suffer from a similar range of neurological problems, including mental confusion,” He said. additional.
The study findings highlight the effect of COVID-19 on the brain, which can lead to serious complications in some patients. They concluded that neurological manifestations occur in the majority of patients hospitalized for COVID-19.
“Encephalopathy was associated with increased morbidity and mortality, regardless of the severity of respiratory disease,” the authors wrote in the article.
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