The effects of COVID-19 on the brain and mind vary and are common.

COVID-19 was initially described as a lung disease, but as its relentless march continued, A much wider range of the human bodyCOVID-19 is associated with skin rashes, bleeding disorders, and structural damage to the heart and kidneys. It is also associated with both brain and mind disorders.

Early research raised the following concerns: Healthcare services It will collapse under the rushing waves of stroke, brain inflammation, and muscle damage. Also, reviews Past coronavirus epidemics People recovering from COVID-19 warned that the burden of mental illness such as depression and PTSD could increase.

However, despite research on new coronavirus infections and hundreds of new articles appearing each week, despite the unprecedented scale and speed of brains being built during a pandemic. At first, it was difficult to find reliable data to confirm or disprove these fears.

So, as a team of doctors, students and researchers in fields such as psychiatry, psychology and neurology, we worked together to do the analysis. All available studies About the effect of COVID-19 on the brain. In doing so, we sought to overcome many speculations surrounding the neurological and psychiatric effects of COVID-19. This is what we found.

Different conditions, different frequencies

Our team soon realized that many of the associations between COVID-19 and the brain came from a small group of highly selected patients and could be biased. Therefore, to address this, we have narrowed down a huge number of potentially relevant papers (more than 13,000) on COVID-19’s neurology and psychiatry, and 215 with sufficient robustness for analysis. I made it. In total, these covered 105,000 people in 30 countries.

The most common neuropsychiatric symptoms in these studies were loss of smell (anosmia), weakness, fatigue, and altered taste (dysgeusia), all of which were found to occur very frequently. It was. For example, in a study we examined, anosmia and weakness appeared in more than 30% of patients. Therefore, the neuropsychiatric symptoms of COVID-19 are very likely to be rules, not exceptions.

But, reassuringly, anxiety about more serious brain-related conditions was initially widespread. Inflammation of the brain (Encephalitis) Guillain-Barré Syndrome, Where the immune system attacks nerves, seems to be based only on very rare events. Concerns about the vast waves of such conditions seem unfounded.

However, we found that some important psychiatric disorders, such as depression and anxiety, each occur in 25% of COVID-19 patients. These can be a significant burden on patients over the next few years. Even less-reported neurological events, such as stroke (which occurred in about 2% of hospitalized patients), have a very large range of pandemics and are often life-threatening due to the fact that patients and the healthcare system. Will be a big challenge for. Changing results.

Interestingly, some symptoms (such as myalgia and olfaction disorders) were found to be more common in people with low severity of COVID-19. Of course, this may have a brief explanation. Perhaps very ill patients are less likely to be scrutinized for certain symptoms, especially less severe ones. People who were not hospitalized also had many disability symptoms (such as fatigue and headaches).

But the answer is not final

As you read this, you may have wondered the big questions about all these studies. Depression is common — could these people develop depression without being infected with COVID-19? And what if mental illness increases the likelihood of getting COVID-19? Will it be? 1 Large-scale study using US data It suggests that this is the case.

All of these are because it is impossible for the people you are studying to know if the rate of neuropsychiatric disorders is high, regardless of infection, without a comparative group of individuals without COVID-19. This is a real problem with the data available at this time. Coronavirus. Ideally, you should need a group of people without mental illness as a baseline and see what happens when some of them are exposed to COVID-19.

Without such studies, it is difficult to draw rigorous conclusions. And unfortunately, most of the studies we examined did not have comparative groups. However, we now have some comparative data. I’m starting to do it. For example, people who have been infected with COVID-19 have been found to be more likely to develop it than the general population. Develop a new mental illnessIn addition, most psychiatric and neurological problems More common after COVID-19 Than after the flu

Another problem is that the studies done so far contain biases that cannot be ruled out. Most people infected with COVID-19 stay away from the hospital, which is biased towards hospitalized patients. It is biased towards acute illness rather than the long-term effects of COVID-19. And it’s biased towards China, the United States, and other Western nations, with little known about what’s happening in much of Africa and the Pacific. A broader range of future research is needed to gain a more comprehensive view.

We know that people with COVID-19 experience a variety of neurological and psychiatric problems very often, so healthcare providers not only provide immediate care for these patients, but also It also means that we need to be prepared for subsequent intensive and often long-term rehabilitation needs. Early research (not yet reviewed by other scientists) is on the rise. About signs Neuropsychiatric symptoms that last for months after onset.

Uncovering the true effects of COVID-19 on the brain is only the first step. In fact, the neurological and psychiatric effects of this disease can pose challenges for clinicians and the healthcare system over the years to come.

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