UPDATES PLUG – A new study has said that people who have had a case of Covid-19 no matter how mild may have accelerated aging of the brain and even increased chances of having dementia or Alzheimer’s.
The study, published Monday, March 7, in the journal Nature, is believed to be the largest of its kind.
It found that the brains of those who had Covid-19 had a greater loss of gray matter and abnormalities in the brain tissue compared with those who didn’t have Covid-19.
The study showed that many of those changes were in the area of the brain related to the sense of smell.
Lead author Gwenaëlle Douaud, an associate professor of neurosciences at the University of Oxford, said:
“We were quite surprised to see clear differences in the brain even with mild infection.”
Dr Douaud and her colleagues checked brain imaging photos from 401 people who had Covid-19 between March 2020 and April 2021, both before infection and an average of 4½ months after infection.
They compared the results of the 401 people with brain imaging of 384 uninfected people similar in age, socioeconomics and risk factors such as blood pressure and obesity. Of the 401 infected people, 15 had been hospitalized.
Douaud explained that it is normal for people to lose 0.2% to 0.3% of gray matter every year in the memory-related areas of the brain as they age.
But in the study evaluation, people who had been infected with the coronavirus lost an additional …
