Six months after suffering from the coronavirus, the brains of hospitalized patients have aged 20 years. This was revealed by British researchers.
- As of May 3, 2022, 1,140 new people are hospitalized per day for a Covid-19 infection in France.
- The average number of new daily critical care entries is currently 116.
Several studies have highlighted the effects of Covid-19 on the brain. In March, scientists at the University of Oxford in England indicated that the coronavirus could cause a decrease in the gray matter and the size of this organ. Recently, researchers from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom revealed that hospitalization for Covid-19 infection had the ability to age the brain by 20 years.
To reach this conclusion, the authors conducted a study published in the journal eClinicalMedicine. For the purposes of their work, they recruited 46 people who received intensive care because of the coronavirus between March 10, 2020 and July 31, 2020. Six months after a severe Covid-19 infection, the researchers tested their performance cognitive skills and assessed whether they had anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. Patient data was compared with that of 66,008 healthy adults.
Cognitive decline similar to 20 years of aging
According to the results, participants who contracted the coronavirus were less accurate and had slower response times than people who did not catch the virus. According to the researchers, the volunteers had difficulty performing certain tasks, such as finding appropriate words for a problem called “verbal analogies”. That “was qualitatively distinct from the profiles of normal aging and dementia and similar to the effects of aging between 50 and 70 years”can we read in the study.
The scientists clarified that cognitive decline after Covid-19 infection was strongly linked to the severity of the disease. This alteration of one or more cognitive functions “persists in the chronic phase for a long time and recovers slowly, if at all.”