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COVID loss of smell and taste... 'but wait, there's more'
[Aljazeera] Now, researchers at the University of Oxford have conducted the first major peer-reviewed study comparing the brain scans of 785 people, aged 51 to 81 of whom 401 had contracted COVID and 384 had not. There were, on average, 141 days between testing positive for COVID and the second brain scan.The study revealed that, when compared to the scans of a control group, those who tested positive for COVID had greater overall brain shrinkage and more grey matter shrinkage and tissue damage in regions linked to smell and mental capacities months after the initial infection. Although the research does shed some light on the ongoing symptoms of long COVID, I would caution against generalising the findings to the population at large before more research is conducted. Researchers said even though the effects were more pronounced in older people who had been hospitalised for their symptoms, even those with mild symptoms had some changes. "Despite the infection being mild for 96 percent of our participants, we saw a greater loss of grey matter volume, and greater tissue damage in the infected participants, on average 4.5 months after infection," said Professor Gwenaëlle Douaud, lead author on the study. "They also showed greater decline in their mental abilities to perform complex tasks, and this mental worsening was partly related to these brain abnormalities." The study was conducted when the Alpha variant was dominant in Britain and is unlikely to include anyone infected with the Delta variant. The researchers also did not say if vaccination against COVID had any impact on the condition. The scans they did reveal changes in several parts of the brain after people contracted COVID, including: Posted by: Besoeker 2022-03-24 |
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