New clues emerge about relatively
rare, but potentially severe, neurological symptoms
COVID-19 cases described by U.K.
doctors offer a sharper view of the illness’s possible effects on the
brain. Strokes,
confusion and psychosis were found among a group of 125 people
hospitalized with infections of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus behind the
pandemic.
The results, described June 25 in Lancet Psychiatry, come from a
group of severely sick people, so they can’t answer how common these types of
neurological symptoms may be in a more general population. Still, these details
bring scientists closer to better understanding COVID-19.
Brain-related symptoms of
COVID-19 patients can slip through the cracks. “These relatively rare but
incredibly severe complications get missed, like needles in a haystack,” says
Benedict Michael, a neurologist at the University of Liverpool in England. So
he and his colleagues designed a survey to uncover these symptoms.
in mental state, including
confusion, personality change or depression. Eighteen of 37 patients with
altered mental states were younger than 60. So far, it’s unclear exactly how
SARS-CoV-2 causes these symptoms.
The
results address the range of neurological symptoms that doctors are seeing, but
big questions remain about how the virus
affects the brain (SN: 6/12/20). “Now that we know the rough
idea of the scale of this, we desperately need research that gets to the
disease mechanisms,” Michael says.
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