For some time, scientists have known that the potentially deadly coronavirus can affect not only the human lungs, but also other organs of the body. Even the human brain is not safe from it. Now, in a study, scientists have been able to show how the virus can even cause memory impairment.
Every day, scientists get new facts and data about the coronavirus. It has long been known that Covid-19 is not just a lung disease. After all, numerous studies have shown that the virus can affect just about any organ in the human body. In mid-2020, coronaviruses were even discovered in the brain. There, too, the virus can apparently cause devastating damage. For a long time it was unclear how the virus could reach the brain and what influence it can have on the human nervous system. Numerous patients who had contracted Covid 19 reported that their memory had been affected by the disease. They also mentioned other symptoms such as dizziness, headaches, difficulty concentrating or extreme fatigue. And that even after the acute phase of the disease had long since ended. For this reason, researchers in the USA have now looked into the long-term effects of Corona. It was found that especially memory disorders had occurred more often in patients who had previously been treated in the hospital.
Covid patients from hospitals suffered particularly frequently from
word-finding disorders. These reportedly occurred in 35 percent of participants in the study. In contrast, patients treated in outpatient settings were significantly less affected, at 13 percent. In addition, patients with treatments in the hospital showed problems with memory and attention span. A total of 740 Covid patients who had received treatment at the US hospital group Mount Sinai had participated in the study. In addition, patients with severe courses had also been observed to have strokes, nerve damage and inflammation of the brain.
It remains to be clarified how the virus gets into the brain. Researchers at the Charité hospital in Berlin want to have found an explanation to this question. They suspect namely that the coronaviruses reach the human brain via the olfactory epithelium, that is, the olfactory mucosa with the olfactory sensory cells. In patients who died from the coronavirus, the scientists were able to detect the virus inside nerve cells. However, since viruses were also found in other brain areas, the researchers also suspect that the viruses also enter the human brain with the blood. The most likely way is the formation of microthrombi that migrate into the brain. Such blood clots can also form in the lungs or heart during corona disease. Scientists have now apparently discovered the first evidence of how aggressively the corona virus can spread in the brain. But the damage to the brain is thought to be caused by the body’s immune response to the viruses, rather than the virus itself, according to researchers. “We have now been able to show that it is not the coronavirus itself that damages the brain, but that the neurological symptoms are probably an indirect consequence of the virus infection,” explains Prof. Dr. Glatzel. The researchers found inflammations in the affected areas, which then obviously damage the brain. Now the scientists want to support their discoveries with further studies.
