Brain Fog and Its Association With COVID-19

Recent study found that around 58% of long-term COVID patients reported signs of brain fog (mental confusion), making it a significant condition in the list of common long COVID symptoms. It usually emerges weeks after someone first becomes sickwith COVID-19.

Brain fog is a severe medical condition that disrupts the proper functioning of our central nervous system. It can interrupt or disturb our cognitive abilities, resulting in mental fatigue and confusion.

It also often leads to difficulty in concentration, memory problems, unclear thoughts, and even psychosis and seizures in severe cases.

Unlike other diseases, it is usually a result of an underlying medical condition. Some of the causes of brain fog are - Insufficient sleep, stress, and anxiety, improper diet, change in hormones, medications, and associated health conditions like diabetes, anemia, depression, and hypothyroidism.

Now dubbed as "Covid Brain", a multidisciplinary team reports another underlying cause could be the presence of inflammatory molecules in the cerebrospinal fluid (liquid surrounding the brain and spinal cord). Encephalopathy, the medical term for COVID brain, is a side effect in patients receiving a type of immunotherapy called chimeric antibody receptor (CAR) T cell therapy for blood cancer.

CAR T cell therapy causes the immune cells to release cytokines, which help the body kill cancer. But they can cause inflammation if they reach the area around the brain.

A study in the Cancer Cell paper focused on 18 patients hospitalized for COVID-19 with severe neurological problems. They were given a full neurological workup to find the cause of their delirium, but nothing was found in the scans.

The researchers then thought to explore the cerebrospinal fluid and devised a test to detect the COVID-19 virus in the fluid by taking the tools used in cancer biology and applying them to COVID-19.

Findings showed that these patients had persistent inflammation and high cytokine levels in their cerebrospinal fluid, which explained their symptoms. These inflammatory markers were similar, but not identical, to those seen in people who have received CAR T cell therapy.

With both COVID-19 and CAR T cell therapy, the neurological effects are delayed by days or weeks.

The findings suggest that anti-inflammatory drugs, like steroids, can be useful for treating the condition, but more research is needed.

‘Brain fog often leads to difficulty in concentration, memory problems, unclear thoughts, and even psychosis and seizures in severe cases.’

Source: Medindia