Some people suffering from long Covid may experience symptoms similar to those seen in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, according to new research.
Recent findings from New York University Langone Health suggest that changes in the brain caused by long Covid — symptoms of the illness that linger for more than three months, according to the CDC — may result in long-term fatigue, brain fog, dizziness, loss of smell or taste, depression, and other symptoms.
Some 20 million Americans have been diagnosed with long Covid, according to Yale Medicine.
“Our work suggests that long-term immune reactions caused in some cases after an initial COVID infection may come with swelling that damages a critical brain barrier in the choroid plexus,” senior study author Dr. Yulin Ge, a professor in the Department of Radiology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said in a statement.
The choroid plexus is a collection of blood vessels in the ventricles of the brain that produce cerebrospinal fluid and act as a barrier, according to the National Institutes of Health. Cerebrospinal fluid acts as a cushion for the brain and spinal cord and protects them from injury. It also removes waste and moves nutrients to essential parts of the brain and spinal cord.
Dr Ge noted in the research that “physical, molecular and clinical evidence suggests that a larger CP may be an early warning sign of future Alzheimer’s-like cognitive decline.”
The study, published in the Alzheimer’s Association’s Alzheimer’s & Dementia journal, followed 86 long Covid patients showing neurological symptoms, 67 people who had fully recovered from Covid without lasting symptoms, and another 26 healthy individuals who had never been infected.
The researchers found that study participants with long Covid had a 10 percent larger choroid plexus than those who recovered without suffering long-term symptoms.
A larger choroid plexus is a marker of chronic neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration, according to the study. They can also be linked to blood-oriented biomarkers found in patients with progressing Alzheimer’s.
The study also found that patients with a larger choroid plexus scored 2 percent worse on a 30-point cognitive test.
The researchers proposed that long Covid can cause chronic inflammation that leads the blood vessels in the CP to thicken.
“It is currently unknown whether these changes are reversible. We are actively analyzing their follow-up data to address this question,” Dr Ge told the New York Post.
Senior study author Dr. Thomas Wisniewski of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine said in a statement that the team’s next steps will be to monitor the patients to see if “the brain changes we identified can predict who will develop long-term cognitive issues.”
