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Early Details of Brain Damage in COVID-19 Patients

Reporter: Irina Robu, PhD

COVID-19 has currently claimed more American lives than World War I, Vietnam War and the Korean war combined. And while it is mainly a respiratory disease, COVID-19 infection affects other organs, including the brain. Researchers at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital found that COVID patients with neurological symptoms show more than some metabolic disturbances in the brain as patients who have suffered oxygen deprivation.

During the course of the pandemic, thousand patients with COVID-19 have been seen at MGH and the severity of the neurological symptoms varies from temporary loss of smell to more severe symptoms such as dizziness, confusion, seizures, and stroke. According to the principal investigator of the study, Eva Maria Ratai, Department of Radiology used 3 Tesla Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) to identify neurochemical abnormalities even the structural imagining findings are normal. COVID-19 patients’ brains showed N-acetyl-aspartate (NAA) reduction, choline elevation, and myo-inositol elevation, comparable to what is seen with these metabolites in other patients with leukoencephalopathy after hypoxia without COVID.

Their research indicated that one of patients with COVID-19 indicate the most severe white matter damage, whereas another had COVID-19 associated necrotizing leukoencephalopathy at the time of imaging. And the patient that experience cardiac arrest showed subtle white matter changes on structural MR. The control cases included one patient with damage due to hypoxia from other causes: one with sepsis-related white matter damage, and a normal, age-matched, healthy volunteer.

The main question still remains whether the decrease in the oxygen of the brain is causing the white matter to change or whether the virus itself is attacking white matter. The conclusion is that MRS can be used as a disease and therapy monitoring tool.

SOURCE

Small study reveals details of brain damage in COVID-19 patients