They discover the root cause of brain fog associated with long-term Covid-19.

VALENCIA (EP). A team of scientists from Trinity College Dublin and researchers from FutureNeuro have discovered the cause of brain fog and cognitive decline seen in some long Covid patients.

A few months after the emergence of the new coronavirus SARS-CoV2 in late 2019, patients reported a syndrome called Long-Covid. began to emerge as a long-term manifestation of acute infectionTo.

Until date Up to 200 long-term Covid symptoms recordedbut patients typically report persistent symptoms such as fatigue, shortness of breath, memory and thinking problems, and joint/muscle pain.

Although the vast majority of people who get Covid-19 make a full recovery, any of these symptoms that persist more than 12 weeks after infection can be considered long Covid.

In this sense, Covid has long been a major public health problem since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. Of these long Covid patients, just under 50 percent report some kind of lasting neurological effects, such as cognitive impairment, fatigue and brain fog.

Now the results published by the Trinity team in Nature Neuroscience show me that There is a change in the integrity of brain vessels in patients suffering from long-term Covid and brain fog. This leakage of blood vessels made it possible to objectively differentiate patients with brain fog and cognitive impairment compared to patients who had long Covid but without brain fog.

The team, led by scientists from the Smurfit Institute of Genetics at Trinity’s School of Genetics and Microbiology and neurologists at the School of Medicine, also discovered a new form of MRI that shows how Long-Covid may affect the human brain’s network of blood vessels. .

“For the first time, we have been able to show that leaky blood vessels in the human brain, together with an overactive immune system, may be key factors in the brain fog associated with Long Covid. This is vital because understanding the underlying cause of these diseases will allow us to develop tailored treatments for patients in the future,” said Professor of Genetics and Head of Genetics at Trinity, and Principal Investigator of FutureNeuro. Matthew Campbell.

“Conducting this complex clinical trial at a time of national crisis and when our hospital system was under severe strain is testament to the skill and resources of our junior doctors and staff. Now the results are likely to change the “view of how we understand and treat post-viral neurological conditions. It also confirms that the neurological symptoms of long Covid can be measured by real and demonstrable metabolic and vascular changes in the brain,” said neurology professor and director Trinity Medical School. and Principal Investigator at FutureNeuro, Colin Doherty.

Beyond Covid-19

In recent years, it has become clear that many neurological diseases, such as multiple sclerosis (MS), likely have viral infection as a triggering factor in the pathology. However, demonstrating this direct connection has always been difficult.

“In this case, the Trinity team was able to demonstrate that all patients who developed Long-Covid were diagnosed with SARS-CoV2 infection, as Ireland required all reported cases to be diagnosed using the most accurate PCR-based methods.” Many other viral infections that lead to post-viral syndromes can cause leaky blood vessels in the brain, which could be a game changer and is being actively investigated by the team,” Campbell said.

“Our findings lay the foundation for new research examining the molecular events that lead to post-viral fatigue and brain fog. “Undoubtedly, similar mechanisms operate in many different types of viral infections, and we are now very close to understanding how and why they cause neurological dysfunction in patients,” concluded postdoctoral fellow and first author of the study Chris Green.