Medical News Today reported that neuro-COVID a phenomenon resulting from long COVID. The serious neurological and neuro-cognitive impairments, result in problems concentrating, keeping up with conversations, and multitasking. All of which can keep people from being able to return to work for many months.
About 1 in 3 people who tested positive for COVID-19 and who were usually not admitted to the hospital for treatment do not recover fully in 3 months.
An international study of people with long COVID documented 203 different symptoms across 10 body systems. More than 88% of the 3,762 people who completed the online survey reported memory problems and cognitive dysfunction, making these the “most persistent and pervasive symptoms in this cohort, equally common across all age groups.”
Two-thirds (65%) reported experiencing symptoms for 6 months. Cognitive dysfunction was one of the top three most debilitating symptoms, alongside fatigue and breathlessness. Brain fog is the most common symptom described by people with cognitive dysfunction following COVID-19 illness. Long COVID, consists of ongoing physical, cognitive, or both symptoms at least 6-12 weeks after having a positive test for COVID-19 or symptoms of acute COVID-19. It is associated with anxiety, as are many of the respiratory and cardiovascular symptoms of long COVID, such as breathlessness, palpitations, and dizziness.
Using fine-grain automated analysis of the brain scan images to pick up changes that would not be visible to the naked eye, the researchers found that compared to controls, participants who had COVID-19 showed:
- a greater loss of grey matter in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex
- an increase in signs of tissue damage in various regions in the brain, including in the brain’s smell center (the olfactory nucleus and tubercle)
- more signs of generalized brain atrophy.
Individuals who had COVID-19 also showed a larger cognitive decline on several cognitive function tests. Since the unvaccinated are the ones getting infected and filling hospitals, it is clear they can not afford to loose any more grey matter since their brain functions are already stilted.