Comments closedThis isn’t who I am – I don’t recognise myself. I panic if I get on the Tube and there’s no seat. It’s a very strange feeling, like not being in your own body. My fear is I’ll never really get better, and that I’m always going to be at 70% of my former self.
Given that 103 million Americans and 770 million people worldwide have been diagnosed as having contracted COVID-19, a future of misery could await a stunningly large cross-section of humanity.
Comments closed“In the 3 months postinfection, people who’d had COVID-19 had higher rates of death and many health conditions including heart failure, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, and depression.”
Comments closedIt was thought at first that the pediatric population was relatively spared from the long-term effects of COVID-19 after infection. But this changed rapidly with increasing reports and studies of pediatric patients not fully recovering from acute COVID-19.
Yet we may have disastrously underestimated one of the most serious sequelae: infection of the brain and nervous system. And we may have missed the neurological damage done to children and young adults who seem to have recovered from COVID-19.
Comments closedThe list of neurocognitive issues that Meropol’s team and other researchers must track is extensive: cognitive decline, changes in brain size and structure, depression and suicidal thinking, tremors, seizures, memory loss, and new or worsened dementia have all been linked to previous SARS-CoV-2 infections. In some cases, these longer-term problems occur even in patients with relatively mild COVID-19.
Comments closedA new Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) study found elevated levels of inflammation in the brains of patients who report persistent symptoms of long COVID.
Using advanced brain scanning with positron emission tomography (PET), the researchers found elevated levels of the protein TSPO, a brain marker of inflammation, in patients with onset of depression within several months after a COVID-19 infection.
Comments closedComments closed[I]t appears that, regardless of gender and other demographic factors, COVID-19 infection at baseline is correlated with increased problems with emotion regulation six months later: depression, anxiety and agitation.
