Several lines of evidence suggest that targeting the body’s defense pathways might help treat a subset of people with the psychiatric disorder. But many open questions remain.
Data from mouse models for mild coronavirus infections and human tissue samples offer further evidence that it doesn’t take a severe infection—or even infection of brain cells at all—to cause long-term neurological symptoms.
Autopsy studies have yet to find clear evidence of destructive viral invasion into patients’ brains, pushing researchers to consider alternative explanations of how SARS-CoV-2 causes neurological symptoms.
A study of 16,000 people suggests that human herpesvirus 6A is a risk factor for developing multiple sclerosis, reinvigorating a neglected hypothesis that the virus could be involved in triggering the disease.
A new study shows that the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients have a greater viral load, while another study in mice shows infection leads to amyloid-β build up.
A review of several dozen hospitalized patients in Brazil finds neurological conditions, including inflammation of the brain and spinal cord, in addition to Guillain-Barre syndrome.