LONDON: A new research has stated that COVID-19 may create complications in the brain that can lead to delirium, nerve damage, and stroke.
Severe COVID-19 infections are known to put patients at risk of neurological complications, but research led by University College London suggests serious problems can occur even in individuals with mild cases of the virus.
The team looked at the neurological symptoms of 43 patients hospitalised with either confirmed or suspected COVID-19.
They found 10 cases of temporary brain dysfunction, 12 cases of brain inflammation, eight strokes, and eight cases of nerve damage. According to them, most of those patients with inflammation were diagnosed with acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM), a rare condition typically seen in children after viral infections.
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“We identified a higher than expected number of people with neurological conditions such as brain inflammation, which did not always correlate with the severity of respiratory symptoms,” said Michael Zandi, of UCL’s Queen Square Institute of Neurology.
The research stated that none of the patients diagnosed with neurological problems had COVID-19 in their cerebrospinal fluid, suggesting that the virus did not directly attack their brains. Perhaps crucially, the team found that ADEM diagnoses not related to the severity of the respiratory COVID-19 disease.
With more than 11 million confirmed infections worldwide, coronavirus is known to cause a variety of health complications in addition to lung infection.
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