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A study conducted by British researchers and published in the journal Nature on March 7 shows that 80% of people infected with the Covid-19 virus have brain damage.
While the epidemic seems to be gradually gaining ground, the Covid-19 virus continues to be talked about. Latest discovery by scientists: the consequences of the virus on the brain. For researchers at the University of Oxford, UK, there is an impact of the virus on the nervous system. They even claim to have found “strong evidence of brain-related pathologies after Covid-19 contamination“.
Decreased brain size, even with mild forms of the disease
To obtain these results, the researchers chose 401 volunteers who were about four months from their infection, 96% of them had suffered mild Covid. They chose a control group of 384 participants who had never had Covid. That is 785 adults aged 51 to 81, in total. They all had MRIs on them. The authors found that the size of the brains of those affected by the virus decreased overall between 0.2 and 2%.
They also found loss of gray matter in olfactory areas (related to smell) and regions related to memory (in the orbitofrontal cortex and parahippocampal gyrus) even for participants who had a mild form of the disease.
On the other hand, volunteers who had recently recovered from Covid found it somewhat more difficult to perform complex mental tasks.
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Permanent troubles?
The authors conclude that “brain scan findings may be indicative of degenerative spread of disease through the olfactory pathways, neuroinflammatory events, or loss of sensory input due to anosmia“.
On the other hand, scientists do not know if the brain changes will be permanent. They believe that the brains of people cured of Covid could, over time, “recover”.
In conclusion, they explain that he “it remains to be determined whether this deleterious impact can be partially reversed, or whether these effects persist in the long term, through additional monitoring.“.