Research Sheds New Light on Toll of Long COVID, Even Among Those with Mild Initial Illness
A growing body of evidence shows that COVID-19 can cause people to suffer long-term symptoms many months after becoming infected. One of the most common symptoms of “long COVID” is impaired cognition, often called brain fog. Long COVID has been shown to affect even people who had mild cases during their initial infection. One in 4 COVID-19 survivors experience this phenomenon, which can come in the form of confusion, word retrieval problems, dizziness, short-term memory issues and the inability to concentrate. Studies using brain imaging reveal that a mild COVID-19 infection can shrink the brain’s shrink grey matter the same amount as a decade of ageing. “We need to move away from quantifying the impact of the disease only in terms of deaths and severe cases,” says Dr. Gwenaëlle Douaud, a neuroscientist at University of Oxford, “as evidence from studies on long COVID, and our study, show that even mild infection can be damaging”.
Full Story: National Geographic