Convalescent Covid patients around the world have reported numerous persistent neurological symptoms, including fatigue, memory loss, and confusion, nicknamed ‘brain fog’ or ‘Covid brain.’ Scientists may now have found the culprit.
“We were initially approached by our colleagues in intensive care medicine who had seen severe delirium in many patients hospitalized with Covid-19,” says neuro-oncologist Jessica Wilcox of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Her team’s initial investigations ultimately resulted in a multidisciplinary collaboration between specialists in neurology, intensive care, microbiology and neuroradiology to find the cause of this ‘brain fog’.
The researchers examined the cerebrospinal fluid of 18 cancer patients who experienced some form of neurological impairment after contracting Covid-19.
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Some degree of ongoing viral infection was initially suspected, but was disregarded after microbiological analysis showed that the patients had indeed recovered from the disease and no longer had the virus in their spinal fluid.
What they did find in the liquid may provide insight into some of the more debilitating symptoms of the so-called “ long Covid. ”
“We found that these patients had persistent inflammation and high levels of cytokines in their cerebrospinal fluid, which explained the symptoms they had,” says the study’s co-lead author, Jan Remsik.
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Cytokines are messenger proteins in the immune system. They can be triggered by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and induced into a frenzy known as a ‘cytokine storm’ of potentially fatal over-inflammation. Cytokine storms were responsible for the more severe cases of Covid-19 seen in ICUs around the world.
A similar phenomenon has been observed in patients undergoing certain types of immunotherapy treatments, such as for cancer, with the suspicion that the cytokines somehow make their way into the brain and cause a host of neurological symptoms similar to those in ‘Covid’. brain’. .
While further research is needed, the first study suggests that additional treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs may relieve ‘brain fog’ in post-Covid patients. The suggestion is that the nervous and immune systems may be more intertwined than previously thought.
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