“Scarier than being on a ventilator”

Adam Denes, head of the neuroimmunology research group at the HUN-REN Research Institute for Experimental Medicine, will speak at the symposium entitled Research on Post-COVID Phenomenain which scientific results obtained after the pandemic will be discussed.

“We found that COVID-19 causes very severe inflammation in many places in the brain. This does not necessarily mean that the brain tissue itself is infected with a virus, but rather that a complex inflammatory state develops within the brain tissue, and the condition changes the core and function of the brain’s main immune cells, i.e. microglial cells, which are extremely important for normal functioning brain,” the researcher explained, according to media reports. MTA.hu

According to these media, long-term neurological damage is more dangerous than being put on a ventilator. Inflammatory lesions were observed in areas of the brain where clinical imaging studies also showed foci of inflammation and correlated with neurological symptoms.

Thus, researchers have suggested that they do play a role in the development of various neurological diseases. “We’re exploring this in a lot of different ways. We look at different inflammatory proteins, analyze, for example, using RNA sequencing, whether inflammatory cells (and not only microglia, but also other brain cells) show phenotypic changes, and also using molecular anatomical methods, very complex, we are trying to understand what it is in these affected areas of the brain, even specifically, how the state of cells in the environment of the brain vessels changes, what inflammatory changes can be detected,” he adds.

One of the main conclusions that scientists have come to is that during the course of COVID-19 disease, extremely heterogeneous inflammation can develop in various areas of the brain, attacking predominantly from the vascular area towards the brain parenchyma (functional area), brain tissue , consisting of neurons and glial cells.

This coincides with changes in the nerve tissue of the brain, such as the disappearance of synapses, which play a crucial role in nerve cell communication, or damage to the myelin sheath that covers the processes of nerve cells in the brain. system and helps the processes of impulse transmission.

The latter is a type of insulation that protects electrical cables, the loss of which disrupts the transmission of electrical signals, and is partly due to a number of abnormalities observed in brain tissue, according to the same publication.

“This is one of the studies whose manuscript has already been completed and is being published. Another study was conducted in parallel. To achieve this, we continued to use various imaging modalities (eg, circulatory magnetic resonance imaging, EEG) and examined with complex imaging modalities. psychological tests and memory tests on patients who recovered from COVID-19 and then developed neurological symptoms,” the researcher added, although this investigation is not yet complete.