Two papers released this month revealed additional symptoms of COVID-19 in patients who survived the disease. The new signs were found in the brain, affecting cognitive functions of the people who had already recovered from even a mild illness brought by the coronavirus.
According to the new study, memory and concentration abilities are the most inflicted aspects of cognition. The investigation was carried out by scholars from the University of Cambridge and other collaborators.
Long COVID Linked to Cognitive Impairment
University of Cambridge's Department of Psychology expert and lead author of the studies Lucy Cheke explained in a report that long COVID received not much attention since the surge of the pandemic, both in the medicinal and political industry.
Long COVID and its associated effects must be taken seriously to know how to deal with it and the risks it can relay to patients, Cheke said.
Cognitive Issues are part of long COVID afflictions, Cheke adds. Politicians who talk about long COVID understand it as an unmitigated coronavirus infection, and it is something deep that they should not ignore, the expert continued.
The studies on the association between long COVID and cognitive impairments were made possible through a larger program called The COVID and Cognition Study or COVCOG.
The two long COVID investigations involved around 200 patients of COVID-19. Each of the participants was diagnosed with the disease between late 2020 to early 2021. The main interest of the new studies includes how the infection cases reflect the 'map of terrain' in terms of cognition during post-acute coronavirus infection.
Approximately two-thirds of the study cohorts reported symptoms of long COVID. Categories of the symptoms considered in the examination are symptoms prevalent more than 12 weeks after the first COVID-19 diagnosis.
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Cognition Problems Found in Long COVID Patients
Individuals who experienced long COVID relayed various symptoms. Around 78 percent of the cohorts found concentrating challenging, while 69 percent of them had brain fog. In addition, 68 percent of the participants had difficulty with memory, and 40 percent exhibited a linguistic-affecting condition called semantic disfluency.
Semantic disfluency is a speech disorder in which the affected people type or say wrong words instead of what they meant sequentially.
The research discovered other important notes of long COVID effects on cognition, such as unusual levels of disruptions in their daily activities. In the participants, more than half of the population reported that they had difficulty functioning in their professional work and could not do tasks for longer periods of time.
A third of the participants lost their jobs because of the disease.
The studies found the most concerning results of long COVID in cognition is that half of the participants were seemingly ignored by specialists when seeking medical advice about their state.
Fellow COVCOG project expert Muzaffer Kaser explained that this is important data that tells how post-COVID cognitive difficulties do not necessarily mean patients have pandemic-related anxiety and depression.
The studies conclude that objective cognitive differences are widespread among long COVID patients, but further investigation is needed to establish what causes the persistent symptoms of these brain problems.
The two studies were published in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. (1, 2).
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