
London, Feb 17 : Headaches, memory problems, and fatigue — commonly known to continue post a Covid-19 infection — may be a result of inflammation in the rest of the body and not because SARS-CoV-2 infects the brain, claims a new research.
London, Headaches, memory problems, and fatigue — commonly known to continue post a Covid-19 infection — may be a result of inflammation in the rest of the body and not because SARS-CoV-2 infects the brain, claims a new research.
“We took that as our hypothesis at the start, too. But so far, there has been no clear evidence that the coronavirus can persist in the brain, let alone proliferate,” said Dr Helena Radbruch, head of the Chronic Neuroinflammation working group at the Department of Neuropathology at Charite.
According to a second hypothesis, the neurological symptoms would instead be a kind of side effect of the strong immune response the body deploys to defend against the virus.
For the study, the team of researchers analysed various areas of the brain in 21 people who died in hospital settings, typically in an ICU, due to severe coronavirus infection. For comparison, the researchers studied nine patients who died of other causes after treatment in intensive care.