Although the neurological effects are more severe in hospitalized patients, they are still common in those who have been treated only on an outpatient basis, the researchers note.
“This rate has gradually increased as the severity of COVID-19 disease has increased. If we look at the patients who were hospitalized, this rate increased to 39% “, said Maxime Taquet, clinical academician in psychiatry at Oxford University and co-author of the new study, according to CNN.
The results help clarify how the health care system should continue to help COVID-19 survivors, the researchers said. “Our results indicate that brain disease and psychiatric disorders are more common after COVID-19 than after the flu or other respiratory infections, even when patients have other risk factors. Now we have to see what happens after six months. “, added Taquet.
COVID-19 influences the appearance of “brain diseases”
This is the largest study of its kind to date and has involved electronic health records of more than 236,000 COVID-19 patients, mostly in the United States. The researchers compared those who had COVID-19 with those who experienced other respiratory tract infections in the same time frame.
They found that those with COVID-19 had a 44% increased risk of neurological and psychiatric illness compared to people with the flu. And they were 16% more likely to experience these effects compared to people with other respiratory tract infections.
About one in 50 patients with COVID-19 has had an ischemic stroke, a blood clot that affects the brain.
However, COVID-19 did not necessarily increase the risk for the full spectrum of neurological diseases. “Two important negative findings were related to parkinsonism and Guillain-Barré syndrome. Both conditions are neurological that we know are sometimes associated with viral infection. We did not find that they are more common after COVID-19 and other respiratory tract infections that we analyzed. “ said Taquet.
The study was important, in part, because of the large number of patient records that researchers were able to analyze, according to Dr. Musa Sami, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Nottingham. “This is a robust work in a large cohort that demonstrates the association between COVID-19 and psychiatric and neurological complications. This is a very important topic, as there has been considerable dismay about COVID-19 as a “brain disease”., he said in a statement.
Other smaller studies have shown the same result. A February study followed 381 patients treated for COVID-19 at a hospital in Rome, Italy, and found that 30% of patients had post-traumatic stress disorder after recovery.
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