COVID-19 Might Cause Loss of Grey Matter in Brain

A gradual loss of grey matter might occur in COVID survivors, says a recent study.

Post-COVID complications are becoming more dangerous than COVID infection itself. Breathing difficulties and secondary infections pose a serious threat to COVID survivors. Now, researchers added a new type of neurological problem to this list.

Researchers affiliated with the University of Oxford reported a gradual loss of grey matter in the brains of COVID survivors.

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‘COVID survivors might experience a gradual loss of grey matter in their brains. The majority of the detrimental effects of COVID-19 occurred in the left hemisphere of the brain.’

"By using automated, objective, and quantitative methods, we were able to uncover a consistent spatial pattern of loss of grey matter in limbic brain regions forming an olfactory and gustatory network," the team said.

The team used data from the UK Biobank, a large-scale repository of biomedical data. A total of 782 volunteers who had taken brain scans previously participated in the study. Of these, 394 people tested positive for COVID-19. Both these infected individuals and the remaining 388 participants and underwent brain scans again.

Researchers then compared the brain scans of infected people taken before and after COVID infection. The brain scans of the remaining 388 people were also used in the comparison process.

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In addition to these, a comparative analysis of brain scans of 15 hospitalized patients with 379 people who had not been hospitalized was also performed.

Key findings

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• A significant loss in the thickness and volume of grey matter occurred in three regions: the parahippocampal gyrus, lateral orbitofrontal cortex, and superior insula.

• The left hemisphere of the brain showed the majority of detrimental effects of COVID-19.

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With spiking effects of the second wave of coronavirus, the best way to keep it at bay is to follow COVID-appropriate safety practices like wearing a mask, regularly cleaning your hands, and coughing into a bent elbow or tissue along with physical distancing (6 feet about 2 arm's length), that may help evade the severity of COVID-19 infection.

"Whether these abnormal changes are the hallmark of the spread of the disease (or the virus itself) in the brain, which may prefigure a future vulnerability of the limbic system, including memory, for these patients, remains to be investigated," the team emphasized.

Source-Medindia