It is still not entirely clear what damage Corona is causing. A new study is now intended to show that the infection has an impact on the brain.
Oxford/Munich – It is the first major study to compare human brain scans before and after infection with the coronavirus*. It was found that the brain can suffer from tissue damage and shrinkage when infected.
According to the results of the study, a corona infection affects regions of the brain that are related to the sense of smell, for example. There is “strong evidence of brain-related abnormalities in Covid-19,” the scientists wrote. Mental performance can also be affected – even months after the study participants have tested positive*.
First large brain study on the consequences of an infection with the corona virus
The researchers from the University of Oxford examined 785 people between the ages of 51 and 81. All had brain scans during the pandemic*. Over half of the subjects tested positive between the two scans. The researchers drew conclusions about how the corona infection affected the brains of the test subjects and were able to compare them with the scans of those who did not test positive.
384 people formed the control group because they did not become infected between scans. Those who became infected showed more brain shrinkage and gray matter shrinkage, particularly in the brain regions associated with the sense of smell, the study found.
The study reports 1.8 percent more brain mass loss among those who tested positive than in the control group in the hippocampal gyrus region. This is a region of the brain related to smell, but also plays a role in memory. In addition, the subjects who tested positive lost 0.8 percent more cerebellar mass in comparison, according to the researchers’ results.
Infection with coronavirus: loss of smell due to damage in certain brain regions?
It is therefore reasonable to assume that the changes in these brain regions lead to a disruption in signal processing and thus contribute to symptoms such as the loss of the sense of smell. The infected also performed worse than the control group when the mental abilities were tested.
The researchers suspect that the greater loss of brain tissue in parts of the cerebellum involved in mental performance is related to the poorer results. The effects appear to be more pronounced in older people and those who have been hospitalized. The Oxford study concludes that the effects were less pronounced in those infected who had a mild course or were even without symptoms*.
The study was published on PubMed as well as in the scientific journal Nature and the preprint platform medRxiv . The status of the peer review process for the study is currently pending.
It is still unclear whether the damage found in connection with a corona infection in the brain is reversible – i.e. curable. More data or brain scans are needed to find out more about this. This is the only way to assess whether the changes are permanent. (mda) *Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
Rubriklistenbild: © picture alliance/dpa/PA Media | Lino Mirgeler/University Of Southampton
