Report: COVID’s damage to the brain

About one out of every eight patients admitted to the hospital for COVID-19 had serious neurologic symptoms, according to a new study from Boston University School of Medicine.

The researchers found that nearly 13% of COVID hospitalized patients during the first year of the pandemic developed serious neurologic symptoms. These neurologic symptoms are frequently reported even in patients with mild illness and for some, these symptoms may persist as part of long COVID.

The researchers from Boston University School of Medicine studied 16,225 patients from 179 hospitals in 24 countries as part of the

Society for Critical Care Medicine’s Viral Infection and Respiratory Illness University Study.

They learned that 1,656 patients (10.2%) at admission had encephalopathy — disease of the brain that alters brain function or structure. The researchers also found that 331 patients (2%) had a stroke, 243 patients (1.5%) had a seizure, and 73 (0.5%) had meningitis or encephalitis at admission or during hospitalization.

They discovered that serious neurologic symptoms were tied to poorer outcomes — increased disease severity, greater need for ICU interventions, longer length of stay, ventilator use nd higher mortality.

“Our findings show that encephalopathy at hospital admission is present in at least one in 10 patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection, while stroke, seizures and meningitis/encephalitis were much less common at admission or during hospitalization,” said author Anna Cervantes-Arslanian, associate professor of neurology, neurosurgery and medicine at Boston University School of Medicine.

Patients with neurologic manifestations were more likely to have medical comorbidities. Most notably, a history of stroke or neurologic disorder increased the odds of developing a neurologic manifestation.

“Further study is desperately needed to understand why these differences occur,” said Cervantes-Arslanian, who is also a neurologist at Boston Medical Center.