Subscribe to our weekly Voices Dispatches email for a comprehensive collection of the top opinions from the past week.
.
Register for our complimentary weekly Voices email bulletin.
A study suggests that even a year after infection, Covid-19 may have a lasting effect on individuals’ cognition and memory abilities, albeit small.
Between August and December 2022, over 140,000 individuals in the UK participated in online assessments to evaluate changes in various brain functions, such as attention, logic, recall, spatial organization, and other abilities.
The New England Journal of Medicine published findings showing that individuals who had recuperated from Covid-19 had minor impairments in their cognitive abilities compared to those who had not contracted the disease.
The researchers stated that individuals who had symptoms of Covid-19 for more than 12 weeks, known as “long Covid,” had ultimately recovered.
Cognitive impairments were observed to be more severe in individuals who were hospitalized with Covid-19 or had been infected with previous strains of coronavirus, including the initial “wild type” virus or the alpha variant.
The researchers stated that even in individuals who recovered quickly, these deficits remained noticeable for a year or longer after contracting the infection.
The individuals also mentioned that those who experienced extended symptoms of Covid-19, which had already gone away by the time the tests were conducted, had deficits in size that were comparable to those who had a shorter recovery period.
.
We were able to identify slight, yet observable decreases in cognitive task ability.
The senior author and director of the React program at Imperial College London’s School of Public Health, Professor Paul Elliott, stated that individuals who continue to have symptoms after recovering from Covid-19 may see improvements in their cognitive functions, similar to those who had a shorter illness. This finding is reassuring for these individuals.
”
Moreover, it seems that the cognitive effects of Covid-19 have decreased since the initial phases of the outbreak. There are now fewer individuals experiencing long-lasting symptoms and the mental processes are less impacted among those who were affected while the Omicron variant was prevalent.
“Moving forward, it will be crucial to maintain surveillance on the lasting physical and mental impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, considering the significant number of individuals affected.”
Although not a medical term, “brain fog” is used to describe a range of symptoms including poor concentration, thinking more slowly than usual, feeling confused, forgetfulness and mental fatigue following Covid-19 infection.
Participants in the React Long Covid study were given eight online tasks to analyze and identify subtle changes in areas such as memory, reasoning, and attention in order to gain further insight into this frequently reported symptom of Covid-19. These tasks also tested executive function, which involves mental processes such as planning and multitasking, as well as impulsivity.
Researchers discovered that Covid-19 infection was linked to impairments across a range of brain functions.
According to the researchers, this was most evident in memory tasks, specifically in the recollection of images of objects that were recently seen.
The team speculates this may be due to problems forming new memories rather than accelerated forgetting.
According to the researchers, individuals also exhibited minor deficiencies in certain activities that involved spatial organization or using language to think.
Professor Adam Hampshire, the primary author and a member of the Department of Brain Sciences at Imperial College London, stated that the potential long-term impact of Covid-19 on cognitive abilities has been a cause for worry among the general public, medical practitioners, and policymakers. However, until now, it has been challenging to accurately assess these effects in a large group of people.
Using our digital platform, we were able to assess various cognitive and memory functions on a large scale and identify minor impairments in cognitive task performance.
In response to the research, Dr. Michael Zandi, a neurologist and researcher at UCL’s Queen Square Institute of Neurology, stated: “This study, which involved over 100,000 participants, was conducted online and may have certain limitations, such as potential bias and the use of computerized testing.”
”
This research compares observations from both hospitalized and non-hospitalized individuals and suggests that concussions may affect attention as the primary impairment, but there is also evidence that the memory storage areas of the brain are not significantly affected.
“The reasons behind these discoveries involve numerous biological processes, are still not fully understood, and warrant further in-depth analysis through long-term studies and clinical trials.”
The source for this information is independent.co.uk.
