This archive report was first published on 8 July 2020.
On July 8, 2020, scientists issued a warning about a potential wave of COVID-linked brain damage, citing new evidence that the disease can cause severe neurological complications.
Researchers at University College London (UCL) studied 43 cases of patients with COVID-19 who suffered from temporary brain dysfunction, strokes, nerve damage, or other serious brain effects.
According to the study, published in the journal Brain, nine patients with brain inflammation were diagnosed with a rare condition called acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM), which is more usually seen in children and can be triggered by viral infections.
Michael Zandi, from UCL's Institute of Neurology, co-led the study and warned that the long-term effects of COVID-19 on the brain are still unknown.
‘Whether we will see an epidemic on a large scale of brain damage linked to the pandemic – perhaps similar to the encephalitis lethargica outbreak in the 1920s and 1930s after the 1918 influenza pandemic – remains to be seen,' Zandi said.
Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist at Western University in Canada, expressed concern that millions of people with COVID-19 may experience cognitive deficits, affecting their ability to work and perform daily activities.
‘My worry is that we have millions of people with COVID-19 now. And if in a year we have 10 million recovered people, and those people have cognitive deficits … then that’s going to affect their ability to work and their ability to go about activities of daily living,' Owen said.
