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Covid, with severe disease 20-year aging risk

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Covid, with severe disease 20-year aging risk

The results of a new study, conducted at the University of Cambridge and anticipated by New Scientist, indicate that Covid, in its most severe forms, could have an impact on the brain. In fact, the research showed that people hospitalized due to a Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus infection could lose up to 10 IQ points in the following six months. It is an intellectual loss comparable to the cognitive decline experienced on average between 50 and 70 years. It is currently unclear how permanent these cognitive impairments are, but if they were lasting, the overall impact could be enormous, given the large number of individuals severely affected by Covid around the world.

The results of the cognitive tests conducted

deepening

Covid, the possible brain effects: damage to hearing, smell and memory

To reach these conclusions, the authors of the study compared the results of various cognitive tests performed six months after infection on 46 patients hospitalized for Covid with those conducted on a control population of 66 thousand individuals. Some gaps have emerged in those recovered from the coronavirus, from a slower information processing speed to a reduction in the ability to understand language. Previous studies had shown how Covid could affect the ability of some neural areas that are neuralgic for attention, working memory and problem solving to use sugar as a “fuel”.

It seems likely that Covid can promote cognitive decline in more ways than one, for example by damaging the brain due to excessive immune reactions or by causing micro hemorrhages or micro ischemias in different neural areas. Further studies will be needed to assess the actual extent of this damage and the patients’ long-term resilience. Adam Hampshire, researcher at Imperial College London and author of another study on the link between cognitive decline and Covid, points out that the impact of severe disease on the brain is not negligible. “In England alone 40 thousand people have been in intensive care for Covid, this means that post-Covid cognitive deficits can affect a large number of people in the world“, explains the expert.

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