According to a study conducted in West Bengal, infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus can accelerate dementia in patients already suffering from neurodegenerative conditions. The research, published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease Reports, found that participants with all subtypes of dementia experienced rapidly progressive dementia after infection with SARS-CoV-2. Insight into the impact of Covid-19 on human cognition has so far been unclear, with neurologists calling it “brain fog”.
The researchers examined the effects of COVID-19 on cognitive impairment in 14 patients with pre-existing dementia who had experienced cognitive decline after infection with SARS-CoV-2. The patients included four with Alzheimer’s disease, five with vascular dementia, three with Parkinson’s disease, and two with the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia.
They were recruited from a total of 550 patients with dementia attending the wards of Burdwan Medical College and Hospital, Bangur Institute of Neurosciences and private cognitive specialty clinics in West Bengal between May 2013 and September 2022.
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Researchers found that after COVID-19 the symptoms of a particular type of dementia changed and both degenerative and vascular dementia began to behave like mixed dementia.
They noted that in patients with insidious onset, slowly progressive dementia and who were previously cognitively stable, rapid and aggressively worsening courses were observed.
Cortical atrophy, which causes the loss of brain cells, was also evident in subsequent follow-ups of the study, according to the researchers. Coagulopathy involving small vessels and inflammation, which further correlated with changes in white matter intensity in the brain, were considered the most important prognostic indicators, he said.
The rapid progression of dementia, in addition to further impairment in cognitive abilities, and the increase or new appearance of white matter lesions suggests that previously compromised brains have little defense to combat new infections. “Brain fog is a vague term with no specific attribution to the spectrum of post-Covid-19 cognitive decline,” said Souvik Dubey, study principal investigator from the Bangur Institute of Neurosciences.
“Based on the progression of cognitive deficits and the association with changes in white matter intensity, we propose a new term: ‘fade-in memory’ (fatigue, reduced fluency, attention deficits, depression, executive dysfunction, slow information processing speed , and subcorrelated) memory loss),” Dubey said.
With aging populations and dementia on the rise globally, there is an urgent need to identify patterns of cognitive deficits associated with COVID-19 to differentiate between cognitive deficits associated with COVID-19 and other types of dementia, researchers say Is. “This understanding will definitely have an impact on future dementia research,” Dubey said.