According to a study published Tuesday, one-third of coronavirus patients were found to be suffering from psychiatric or brain problems within six months of their COVID-19 diagnosis.
Researchers analyzed the medical records of 236,379 COVID patients, mostly from the US, and found that 34 percent had been diagnosed with neurological or psychiatric disorders six months later.
About one in eight of the patients, or 12.8 percent, were first diagnosed with such a disease, the study showed.
Anxiety, at 17 percent, and depression or mood disorders, at 14 percent, were the most common diagnoses, according to the study.
Cases of post-COVID cases of stroke, dementia and other neurological conditions were rarer, but still significant – especially in people who had been seriously ill with the virus, the scientists said.
Of those admitted to intensive care with the coronavirus, 7 percent had a stroke within six months. Nearly 2 percent were diagnosed with dementia, the study found.
The conditions were significantly more common in COVID patients than in comparison groups of people who recovered from influenza or other respiratory infections in the same period.
“Our results indicate that brain and psychiatric disorders are more common after COVID-19 than after influenza or other respiratory infections,” said Max Taquet, a psychiatrist at Oxford University, UK, who co-led the work.
The study, published in the journal Lancet Psychiatry, could not determine how the virus is linked to psychiatric conditions, Taquet said – adding that urgent research is needed to identify the mechanisms involved.
The researchers also suggested that the pandemic could trigger a wave of mental and neurological problems.
“While the individual risks are small for most conditions, the impact on the entire population can be significant,” said Paul Harrison, an Oxford psychiatry professor who co-led the work.
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