Researchers studied 785 people aged from 51 to 81 whose brains were scanned before and during the pandemic. Photograph: temet/Getty Images
CNN reports a new study says people who had even a mild case of COVID-19 may have accelerated aging of the brain and other changes to it.
The study, published Monday in the journal Nature, is believed to be the largest of its kind. It found that the brains of those who had COVID-19 had a greater loss of gray matter and abnormalities in the brain tissue compared with those who didn’t have COVID-19. Many of those changes were in the area of the brain related to the sense of smell.
The UK Biobank project has followed the health of 500,000 people for about 15 years and has a database of scans recorded before the pandemic so that provided a unique opportunity to study the long-term health impacts of the virus.
After scientists re-scanned participants, they found the overall brain size in infected participants shrunk between 0.2% and 2%. They also found there were losses in grey matter in the olfactory areas, linked to smell, and regions linked to memory. And those who had recently recovered from COVID found it a bit harder to perform complex mental tasks
But the researchers do not know whether the changes are reversible or truly matter for health and well-being.
A professor with the project stated, “We need to bear in mind that the brain is really plastic – by that we mean it can heal itself – so there is a really good chance that, over time, the harmful effects of infection will ease.”
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