Aqsa, Jamia Millia Islamia
The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is still unlocking many unknown facts about it. With every new strain, different symptoms and post symptoms are still underway of getting understood. One such post covid symptom is reduced intelligence. To understand the possible cognitive consequences of COVID-19, a study on people who recovered from Covid infection took place. It was to test the hypothesis that those who had recovered from COVID-19 would show cognitive deficits.
The recent study:
The study included 81,337 participants in total. Some tested positive for COVID-19 and were hospitalized with severe COVID-19 infection, while others were not. It was organized as a part of the Great British Intelligence Test conducted by Imperial College London. The UK Dementia Research Institute Care Research, Technology Centre and Biomedical Research Centre at Imperial College London, EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Neurotechnology, Welcome Trust Clinical Fellowship, and Medical Research Council funded this project.
The data was collected from people from the United Kingdom.
They were investigated upon a series of cognitive tasks via The Great British Intelligence Test. The test was then promoted for free among people to test themselves to find out their cognitive strengths.
The data was collected after performing nine tests, which measured distinct aspects of human cognition. Some other features measured were: working memory, attention, and emotion processing abilities. These tests were based on analyses that were sensitive to population variables of interest such as age, gender, and education level, manageable for older adults and patients with mild cognitive or motor deficits. With assistance from WT, AH conducted all processing and analysis steps in MATLAB.
Observations:
Individuals with severe COVID-19 disease showed symptoms that persist longer. This condition is known as ‘Long COVID’ or post-Covid-19 fatigue syndrome, a long-term condition that some people suffer after Covid-19 infection. Symptoms of long Covid include fatigue, persisting high temperature, breathlessness, cognitive impairment, generalized pain, and mental health problems. Case studies have also shown that COVID-19 patients can develop neurological complications. Several studies have shown that COVID-19 patients can have neurological complications. Cognitive deficits are usually observed in those who required a lengthy hospital stay or intubation. Other factors such as pre-existing diseases did not affect the results.
Results:
Multiple contributing factors determine the degree of cognitive deficit. One such factor is the degree of severity, such as whether the patients were, put on a ventilator or stayed at home also determined the degree of deficit. Hospitalized patients with respiratory disease demonstrate both objective and subjective cognitive deficits. The degree of cognitive deficits in cases who were not put on a ventilator and remained at home was uneven.
The cognitive defects continued even into the recovery phase and varied with respiratory symptom severity. The scale of the observed deficit was not fragile; those who had previously been put on a ventilator had a 0.47 disadvantage, while those who had never been on one had a 0.27 cognitive deficit. The average deficit suffered by stroke victims was reported as 0.24.
Also read: How does the rice blast fungus invade its host cells?
References:
- Hampshire, A., Trender, W., Chamberlain, S. R., Jolly, A. E., Grant, J. E., Patrick, F., Mazibuko, N., Williams, S. C., Barnby, J. M., Hellyer, P., & Mehta, M. A. (2021). Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from COVID-19. EClinicalMedicine, 101044. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2021.101044
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