Covid-19 attacks the respiratory tract but also the brain. During its annual meeting, the Radiological Society of North America presented the results of its study on the incidence of brain damage in Covid-19 patients. About 1% of patients followed are affected by various abnormalities visible after an imaging examination.
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The Covid-19 is a disease that affects many organs. If respiratory problems are the most emblematic and the most studied, the brain is not spared. The Radiological Society of North America (RSNA for Radiological Society of North America, in English) wanted to determine theimpact brain damage in patients with confirmed infection with SARS-CoV-2. ” Our study shows that complications in the central nervous system are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in this pandemic devastating Said Thomas Jefferson, director of the radioneurology unit at the University of Philadelphia. Of the 39,750 patients treated in the 11 medical centers that participated in the study (in the United States and Europe), 4,342 had a medical brain imaging test. And for 10% of them, the images showed anomalies visible.
Brain damage in people with Covid-19
Patients are on average 65.8 years old and there are twice as many males as females. The most common complication isstroke for 62% of patients, followed by intracerebral hemorrhage andencephalitis. Most often, these lesions are unilateral, i.e. located on one side of the brain. The most affected regions are frontal lobe and parietal in more than one in two cases, followed by the lobe temporal, the cerebellum and finally the brainstem. The lesions are both located in the matter white, cortical or subcortical.
What about the developing brain?
During the same congress, the RSNA also studied the effects of Covid-19 on the brains of babies. Mild to moderate infection for the pregnancy, towards the 28e week in the case of the women studied here, does not appear to alter the development of the brain of the fetus. ” In our study, there was no evidence that maternal SARS-CoV-2 infection has any effect on unborn child’s brain development. Explains Dr. Sophia Stöcklein of the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. In addition, proven cases of vertical mother-to-child transmission of SARS-CoV-2 are very rare and their effect on fetal health remains to be determined.
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