As the world learns to live with COVID-19, scientists still have many unanswered questions about how the infection affects the body and brain, not only when other people are sick, but also long-term.
In a study presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, researchers report brain changes in other people who have recovered from COVID-19.
The scientists performed MRIs of the brains of 46 other people who had had COVID-19 in the past six months and compared them to scans of 30 other people who had never been infected. They found that most people who had recovered from COVID-19 had adjustments in the flow of small blood vessels in the frontal lobe and brainstem areas, which are related to higher-order cognitive skills such as language expression and voluntary movements. Compared to the organization, this organization showed reduced flow in those microvessels. .
It is not yet clear exactly how this might translate into daily activities; The researchers did not stick to detailed analyses of cognitive service as in either group. But Bharat Biswal, a professor of biomedical engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and co-investigator of the research, says the team is reading how those settings might change. Serve ass. Some of the participants, for example, had high blood pressure or other chronic diseases that may also play a role in how their brains were ed through COVID-19, and scientists are investigating whether other people with those underlying physical situations showed varying degrees of brain adjustment compared to those who did not.
The study builds on previous studies by Biswal and colleagues, who documented structural changes in the brain that differentiate other people who were hospitalized and recovered from COVID-19 from those who did not become infected. This study revealed changes in the limbic formula and hippocampus of the brain, which monitors emotional and behavioral activities as well as memory.
Taken together, Biswal says, the findings “provide a first concept of where to look and parameters to look at” for scientists studying the effects of Long COVID. He and his team hope to stay with volunteers longer to better document how long the changes last. Last.
“COVID-19 has multidimensional effects in the framework,” he says, adding in the brain. And while scientists have yet to investigate who has been reinfected, multiple episodes of COVID-19 can also cause cumulative adjustments in framework systems. Biswal says that he is “a bit concerned” about how reinfections “could show up in the brain and other organs. ” More studies still need to be done to determine how COVID-19 affects the brain and the body.