Last Thursday (4/15/2021) I was checking out an online seminar of the Oklahoma Neuroscience Chapter group, entitled "COVID-19: A systemic disease with neurological complications" by Dr. Douglas Drevets.
They recorded the session and uploaded in Youtube as below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWw6zl4r49A
In short, Dr. Drevets reported Covid19 after-effects with a focus on neuro-psychiatric symptoms, and outlined the mechanisms.
He was talking about nasty symptoms that you don't want to have, such as stroke, fatigue (chronic fatigue syndrome-like, so called "long covid"), headache, anxiety, mood swing and insomnia.
Although the visus infects and affects ACE2-expressing target cells (rich in endothelial cells of lungs, GI tract, blood vessels), in addition, the virus affects brain as well, through directly invading neurons and through vascular damage and secreted cytokines.
Severity of respiratory covid symptoms (hospitalized or not, usually based on blood oxygen level) and neuro-psychiatric symptoms did not correlate. Even people with mild covid symptoms can have notable neuro-psychiatric symptoms later.
Other virus infections can also affect brain (Zica, Japanese encephalitis, etc). But their analysis indicated difference in cytokine expression profiles between COVID and other viral infections.
Interesting? Yes.
What does it mean? I/we don't know (yet).
Will covid brain lead to other long-term effects or cause other diseases like Alzheimer's? Remain to be seen.
Covid is not just a cold. We are still investigating its clinical manifestations and long-term effects.
In the meantime, you better not catch Covid and risk nasty "covid brain" now. Get your vaccine and do what you can.
