Hyderabad: According to a study done by North Western University in the United States, about half of the novel coronavirus patients depict neurological issues including headache, decreased alertness and seizures.
The scientific community is of the belief that COVID-19 would wreak havoc to the entire nervous system across the world.
Different neurological manifestations of COVID-19 include dizziness, difficulty concentrating, disorders of smell and taste, strokes, weakness and muscle pain.
This is important as it claims that COVID-19 may be present in an individual with all the above symptoms before the common symptoms like respiratory issues and fever begin to manifest itself.
If the infection has a lasting impact on our nervous systems then it would affect the brain, spinal cord and muscles! In addition to this, it is believed that the virus will cause direct infection of the brain and meninges.
Finally, the reaction of the immune system to the infection may cause inflammation that can damage to brain and nerves.
A Radiology journal revealed that altered mental status and stroke are the most common neurological symptoms in COVID-19 patients.
Read: Global COVID-19 tracker
Radiology assistant professor Abdelkader Mahammedi said: “Studies have described the spectrum of chest imaging features of COVID-19, but only a few case reports have described COVID-19 associated neuroimaging findings.”
“To date, this is the largest and first study in the literature that characterizes the neurological symptoms and neuroimaging features in COVID-19 patients. These newly discovered patterns could help doctors better and sooner recognize associations with COVID-19 and possibly provide earlier interventions,” professor Mahammedi added.
The University of Brescia, University of Eastern Piedmont and University of Sassari researchers in Italy conducted a study in which they investigated neurological symptoms and imaging findings in patients.
The study was conducted on 725 hospitalized patients with confirmed COVID-19 infection in which 108 (15%) had serious neurological symptoms and underwent brain or spine imaging. 99 per cent of patients had brain CT scans while 16 per cent had head and neck CT imaging and 18 per cent had a brain MRI. The study was conducted on COVID-19 patients admitted between February 29 and April 4.
The researchers found that 59% of patients reported an altered mental state, 31% experienced stroke, 12 % experienced headache, seizure (9%) and dizziness (4%) among other symptoms.
Since the neurological impacts are less now, only time will tell how to diagnose, manage and treat the new manifestations. The coronavirus pandemic has infected more than 77,31,673 and killed over 4,28,210 people across the world. More than 39,25,273 people have recovered so far.
