Does Covid-19 cause long-term brain damage? According to the researchers, people who have contracted the virus are more likely to later be affected by psychological and neurological disorders, such as dementia or epileptic seizures.
The study, conducted by scientists at the University of Oxford and published Wednesday in The Lancet Psychiatrywas performed on more than a million patients of all ages and from various countries around the world, a first.
Disorders continue to rise 2 years after contracting the virus
Several weeks or even months after the illness, the patients showed higher-than-normal signs of cognitive decline, according to the researchers. Among the pathologies identified are cognitive deficit, also called brain fog, dementia, psychotic disorders, epilepsy and syncope.
The risk even remains present, or even continues to increase, in some patients two years after they developed symptoms of Covid-19. A problem not only for the patient, worried about seeing her health deteriorate long after contracting the virus, but also in terms of public health, having to attend hospitals in the long term.
“The health systems, in particular the services dedicated to mental and neurological health, in France and England are already saturated. Therefore, adding additional cases can pose real problems”, worries Maxime Taquet, one of the authors of the study. , in the columns. of Atlantic.
On the other hand, the increased incidence of more common psychiatric conditions, such as anxiety or mood disorders, is only temporary, according to the study. They are more frequent immediately after a patient contracts Covid, but return to their normal level one or two months after the virus has disappeared.
More than 2 years of data
This is the first study of such magnitude and conducted over such a long period. The researchers collected data from 1,284,437 million patients over a period of more than two years, between January 2020 and April 2022.
Many of them were in the United States, but the study also includes data from Australia, the United Kingdom, Spain, Bulgaria, India, Malaysia and Taiwan.
Another peculiarity of this study, the results of patients affected by Covid were compared with data from patients affected by other respiratory pathologies, in the same period. One way to ensure that the study takes into account the consequences specifically inherent to Covid-19 and not to any respiratory disease.
The psychological risks are still so high with Omicron
The study by Oxford scientists analyzes the evolution of the risks of psychiatric disorders according to the different variants. The results show that the appearance of the Alpha variant did not have a notable influence on the proportion of risks of psychic or neurological disorders.
On the other hand, scientists note, just after the appearance of the Delta variant, an increased risk for patients of stroke, seizures, syncope, cognitive deficits, insomnia and anxiety disorders, combined with a higher mortality rate than in patients with other respiratory disorders.
As for the Omicron variant, today most, if considered less severe than the other variants, the risks of psychiatric and neurological disorders appear to be similar compared to Alpha or Delta. The mortality rate, on the other hand, is lower.
Children also affected
The study underlines that, whatever the variants, children are not exempt from psychiatric and neurological disorders. However, they are not affected in the same way.
The risk of epilepsy is markedly higher in young patients than in adults, while cases of anxiety and depression do not increase after six months, as in adults. They also save themselves the risk of brain fog.
However, as in adults, all these disorders, particularly anxiety and depression, are also partly indirect consequences of the pandemic, the researchers point out.
Source: BFM TV
