MRI brain scans of hundreds of people in the UK taken before and after they contracted COVID-19 reveal changes that persisted months after recovery from the disease, a paper published today in Nature reports. These changes, while subtle, included tissue damage in certain brain areas, including those involved in olfaction, and a decline in overall brain size that was larger than the expected decline caused by natural aging. But experts caution that the clinical effects of these changes and whether they will persist in the long-term remain unclear.
“It is a very novel study with conclusive data,” Avindra Nath of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke who wasn’t involved in the research tells Bloomberg. “The findings are very intriguing, with important implications for the population at large.”
The study considered 785 subjects between the ages of 51 and 81 who were each scanned twice, about three years apart. ...
