Brain and nerve conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and stroke are significantly more common among COVID-19 survivors than those who’ve never had the disease, according to a study of millions of patient records that raises alarms about the pandemic’s devastating aftereffects.
Former COVID-19 patients had a 42% increased risk of neurological problems a year after testing positive, the study published Thursday in the journal Nature Medicine showed. That translates to an extra seven cases of impaired cognition, memory disorders, Parkinson’s-like diseases and dozens of other brain-related conditions for every 100 people who caught the coronavirus, according to scientists led by Ziyad Al-Aly, chief of research and development at the Veterans Affairs (VA) St. Louis Health Care System.
"We’re seeing the early warning signals of the toll the pandemic will leave in its wake — waves of disease and disability that clinicians and governments need to pay attention to,” said Al-Aly, who’s also a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University. "Some of the effects are life-threatening and have the potential to literally change people’s lives forever.”