A new UK coronavirus study found troubling signs of brain complications in patients with severe COVID-19.
The study, published in The Lancet Psychiatry, looked at 153 patients who were hospitalized with severe cases of the disease, and found that 125 of them experienced a variety of neurological and psychiatric complications that may be related to the coronavirus.
“The patients survived, but they survived with the residual effects of having affected the nervous system by this virus,” Dr. Bob Lahita told CBSN presenters Vladimir Duthiers and Anne-Marie Green on Friday.
The most commonly reported complication was stroke, which occurred in 62% of patients. Of the 77 stroke cases reported in the study, 57 were caused by a blood clot in the brain, nine were caused by cerebral hemorrhage, and one patient’s stroke was caused by “inflammation in the blood vessels of the brain.” Most strokes occurred in patients 60 years of age or older.
About a third of the patients in the study experienced “an altered mental state such as brain swelling, psychosis, and dementia-like symptoms,” including signs of confusion or changes in behavior.
“Altered mental status is common in hospitalized patients with severe infection,” the study says, but adds that the researchers “observed a disproportionate number of neuropsychiatric presentations in younger patients.”
Twenty-three of the patients with an altered mental state were diagnosed with psychiatric conditions, the “vast majority” of which were found to have recently developed. However, the researchers say some may simply not have been diagnosed before the patient developed the virus. About half of that group were under the age of 60.
“Regarding age, it is clear that older people will not do as well as younger people,” said Lahita. But some younger people also develop serious illnesses.
“We just don’t know who will get infected and die,” he said. “And we in the scientific community believe it has to do with immunogenetics, which means that you inherit a certain type of immune system that can make you susceptible to actually doing poorly once you’re infected.”
The researchers say that the high proportion of younger patients Diagnosed with these brain complications could be due to an increased likelihood of being referred to a mental health specialist after showing signs of an altered mental state, while the same changes in older patients could more likely have been attributed to delirium and “not investigated.” Deeper “.
Dr. Benedict Michael of the University of Liverpool, one of the study’s lead authors, called the study an “important first step” to unravel the link between neurological complications and COVID-19.
“We now need detailed studies to understand the possible biological mechanisms underlying these complications in order to explore possible treatments,” he wrote in a press release on the findings.
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