From respiratory problems to difficulty concentrating and problem-solving, a new Western University led study shows the effects of COVID-19 can last well beyond the initial infection.
Western neuroscientists Adrian Owen and Conor Wild, assisted by collaborators at the University of Cambridge, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and the University of Ottawa, assessed nearly 500 people approximately three months after they were confirmed to have contracted the virus. What they found was significant impairments in reasoning, speed of thinking, and verbal abilities among study participants. There was no sign of damage to memory functions.
“The pattern of cognitive impairment in these COVID-19 patients resembles that of healthy study participants who are sleep-deprived,” said Owen, professor of cognitive neuroscience and imaging at Western’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry.
Researchers also found that participants who suffered more severe COVID-19 symptoms were more likely to have worse cognitive impairments than those who only experienced very mild infections. It was also determined that participants had significantly higher levels of depression and anxiety, with 30 per cent meeting the clinical criteria for one or both of them.
Launched in June 2020, the study was funded by the Manulife CIFAR Population Health & Well-being Grant Program. It relied on a robust data set collected through the Cambridge Brain Sciences online scientific investigation tool. Owen and Wild used the same investigation tool to conduct a sleep study involving more than 40,000 people in 2017.
There has been no indication the level of cognitive impairment is related to the amount of time between COVID infection and the assessment, which researchers believe means the effects could be long-lasting.
“The impairments were not smaller for individuals who were up to three months post-infection, which suggests that these effects may not subside in the short term,” said Wild, a Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry research associate.
The findings of the study have been published by Cell Reports Medicine.
