More research is being published about the effects of COVID-19 on the brain. Eric Topol has published a Substack post summarizing two recent studies that were based on studying large groups of people.
The 2 new studies are the largest to date to prospectively assess Covid impact on cognitive function, and both are consistent in showing declines as compared with controls without Covid. The assessment of cognition in the cohort from England was more in-depth, but of shorter duration, and demonstrated the favorable effect of symptom resolution. The extrapolation to a loss of 3 to 9 IQ points is difficult contextualize, and the risk of long-term sequelae is unknown. It is worthwhile noting that these IQ score losses represent averages, and there is considerable variability in cognitive deficit. In contrast, the Norwegian study only got into memory but had much longer, serial assessment up to 3 years. None of this is good news for Long Covid and the brain, folks.
I wonder what the long-term effects on society will be from this. Having a large percentage of people with measurable cognitive impairment cannot be a good thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment