{"id":9826,"date":"2026-07-10T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/?p=9826"},"modified":"2026-07-25T14:53:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T18:53:16","slug":"new-study-provides-first-evidence-of-dopamine-system-injury-in-the-brain-of-long-covid-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/news\/new-study-provides-first-evidence-of-dopamine-system-injury-in-the-brain-of-long-covid-patients\/","title":{"rendered":"New Study Provides First Evidence of Dopamine System Injury in the Brain of Long COVID Patients"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toronto, ON (July 10, 2026)<\/strong> \u2014 A new brain imaging study led by researchers at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), published in eBioMedicine<\/a>, provides the strongest evidence to date that long COVID is associated with injury to dopamine-releasing neurons in the brain\u2014a finding that may explain symptoms such as lack of motivation due to fatigue, slowed movement, and memory difficulties, and could open the door to new treatment strategies.<\/p>\n

Long COVID is estimated to affect five per cent of the world population, including two million Canadians, and is characterized by a wide range of persistent and sometimes debilitating symptoms, including brain-related ones such as fatigue, brain fog, memory problems, or low mood, that continue for at least three months following the initial COVID-19 infection. Despite its prevalence, no evidence-based treatments currently exist, largely due to limited understanding of the underlying brain pathology.<\/p>\n

In the new study, researchers used positron emission tomography (PET) brain imaging to measure a well-established marker of dopamine neuron integrity in people with long COVID and healthy individuals.<\/p>\n

The team found significantly lower levels of the imaging marker\u2014indicating reduced dopamine nerve terminal density\u2014across all major regions of the striatum, the brain structure that plays a central role in motivation, movement, and thinking, in people with long COVID compared to healthy individuals. Specifically, lower markers in the ventral striatum were associated with a greater loss of motivation, marker reductions in the dorsal putamen were associated with slowed movement speed, and marker loss in the caudate putamen was linked to memory difficulties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toronto, ON (July 10, 2026)<\/strong> \u2014 A new brain imaging study led by researchers at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), published in eBioMedicine<\/a>, provides the strongest evidence to date that long COVID is associated with injury to dopamine-releasing neurons in the brain\u2014a finding that may explain symptoms such as lack of motivation due to fatigue, slowed movement, and memory difficulties, and could open the door to new treatment strategies.<\/p>\n

Long COVID is estimated to affect five per cent of the world population, including two million Canadians, and is characterized by a wide range of persistent and sometimes debilitating symptoms, including brain-related ones such as fatigue, brain fog, memory problems, or low mood, that continue for at least three months following the initial COVID-19 infection. Despite its prevalence, no evidence-based treatments currently exist, largely due to limited understanding of the underlying brain pathology.<\/p>\n

In the new study, researchers used positron emission tomography (PET) brain imaging to measure a well-established marker of dopamine neuron integrity in people with long COVID and healthy individuals.<\/p>\n

Continue readingNew Study Provides First Evidence of Dopamine System Injury in the Brain of Long COVID Patients<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[69,96,154,18,1422,11,8,14],"class_list":["post-9826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-camh","tag-canada","tag-centre-for-addiction-and-mental-health","tag-covid-19","tag-dopamine","tag-long-covid","tag-research","tag-sars-cov-2","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9826"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9835,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9826\/revisions\/9835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}