Covid Affects the Brain, Causes Significant Changes to It

The Covid-19 virus affects the brain, a recent study suggests. According to scientists the virus causes significant changes to the brain. Even after a mild infection, the overall size of the brain had shrunk slightly, with less grey matter in the parts related to smell and memory. The researchers do not know whether the changes are permanent but stressed the brain could heal. The study is published in the journal Nature. Lead author Prof Gwenaelle Douaud, from the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, at the University of Oxford, said: "We were looking at essentially mild infection, so to see that we could really see some differences in their brain and how much their brain had changed compared with those who had not been infected was quite a surprise." The scientists rescanned: 401 participants 4.5 months, on average, after their infection, 96% of whom had had mild Covid and 384 participants who had not had Covid What the found was that the overall brain size in infected participants had shrunk between 0.2 and 2%. There were losses in grey matter in the olfactory areas, linked to smell, and regions linked to memory. Those who had recently recovered from Covid found it a bit harder to perform complex mental tasks. But the researchers do not know whether the changes are reversible or truly matter for health and wellbeing. It is also unclear whether all variants of the virus cause this damage. Source: Daily Mail