Constituting the most rigorous investigation to date of the long-term cognitive impact of severe forms of Covid-19, a recent British study showed a decline corresponding to two decades of brain aging in these patients.
Accurately assess the extent of cognitive decline in hospitalized patients
As the pandemic swept the planet, it became clear that infection with the SARS-CoV-2 could also lead to lasting symptoms and health problems: the famous long covid. While a study published last December showed that about a third of patients who required hospitalization felt fully recovered a year later, most of those who had not changed much suffered from persistent cognitive decline. , the magnitude of which seemed to be related to the severity of the disease.
In the context of work recently published in the journal eClinicalMedicine, David Menon and his colleagues from thecambridge university examined the results of cognitive tests carried out by 46 British patients who had contracted a severe form of Covid-19, an average of six months after admission to hospital. The researchers specifying that 16 of them had also had to be placed on artificial ventilation.
The cognitive tests were carried out via the platform Cognitrondeveloped by researchers at the‘Imperial College London and having served as the basis for Great British Intelligence Test of the BBC. The team compared the subjects’ results to those of 460 people who had never had the covid (ten of these were matched for each patient based on characteristics such as age, sex, level of education and mother tongue).
Notable differences
It turned out that all the subjects had different cognitive impairments (including in particular a slower processing speed), the extent of which was on average comparable to that of the cognitive decline observed between 50 and 70 years of age. ” The thing these patients struggle the most with is verbal reasoning. “, highlighted Menonexplaining that the questions assessing this ability involved completing analogies such as “laces are to shoes what buttons are to coats “.
Although the team did not find a marked difference between the subjects who took the tests six and ten months after their admission to the hospital, respectively, they did point to significant signs of improvement. The next step will be to have them undergo new tests in order to document their long-term evolution.
According to Menonthe study of cognitive decline in patients with covid would also have implications for diseases causing similar problems. ” Future trials will help understand the underlying mechanisms and produce effective treatments to prevent this phenomenon and perhaps treat it later. concludes the researcher.
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