The following is a summary of “Characterizing long-COVID brain fog: a retrospective cohort study,” published in the August 2023 journal of Neurology by Lam et al.
Long-COVID or Post-COVID condition (PCC) is a multi-system disease resulting from COVID-19, causing neurocognitive impairment, with limited risk factors and biomarkers.
Researchers conducted a retrospective study to compare clinical risk factors, biochemical markers, and long-term clinical courses between PCC patients with subjective neurocognitive symptoms (NC+) and those without (NC−).
They investigated a well-characterized provincial database of patients with clinically confirmed PCC, divided into subjective NC+ and without NC− cohorts. Demographic, clinical, and biochemical differences during an initial consultation were analyzed. Neurocognitive impairment was identified by multivariate regression analyses. A serial assessment of patient-reported health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) metric Eq-5D-5L-vas score was used to determine the recovery trajectory.
The results showed 8 months post-infection, subjective neurocognitive impairment was independently linked to women, milder acute infection, and pre-existing mental health diagnoses. NC+ patients had lower IgG, IgG1, and IgG3 levels than NC− patients. The NC+ group exhibited poorer HR-QoL during the initial consultation but gradually improved over 20 months post-infection.
They concluded PCC causes neurocognitive impairment, involving risk factors, immune response aberrations, and delayed recovery; early identification is crucial for medical follow-up.
Source: link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00415-023-11913-w
