As we enter the third year of the COVID-19 crisis, a study has been released showing that brain abnormalities may occur in people with long-COVID.
For more, stream KCBS Radio now.
Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, Professor of medicine and Associate Dean for Regional Campuses at UCSF, told KCBS Radio's "Ask An Expert" the results of the study, conducted by the University of Oxford, were "shocking."
"They found that people who had COVID had much more loss of, what we call, gray matter — that's the thinking part — and tissue damage," he said. "They were doing these scans months apart, so it suggests that some of these changes were not related to age and were likely related to COVID."
The study looked at around 785 people in the U.K., ages 51-81, who had coronavirus between March 2020 and April 2021, and compared the data to about 348 people who never contracted the virus. A majority of the tissue damage was in areas of the brain related to smell.
"What they found was a remarkable thing," Chin-Hong said.
Due to lack of further information, Chin-Hong said it's difficult to interpret these findings. "Maybe these brain lesions will reverse over time," he theorized, but added that it does give the world a wake-up call.
The study was done when earlier variants dominated the pandemic, so if you're vaccinated, the omicron variant, and hopefully future variants, will not be able to enter the body, he said. "It's going to be kicked out by memory T-cells and B-cells, so that it will have a less chance of going to the brain."
Further studies are now being conducted to learn more about how coronavirus impacts brain abnormalities.
LISTEN to KCBS Radio
FAVORITE KCBS Radio
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Related
