Cognitive Functions Impacted by Severe COVID-19 Infections

Several COVID-19 case studies have revealed neurological problems in severely affected COVID-19 patients. To better understand this issue, researchers from the Imperial College of London analyzed cognitive test data from 84,285 Great British Intelligence Test participants.

Published on October 21, 2020, this non-peer-reviewed study found people who had recovered, including those no longer reporting symptoms, exhibited significant cognitive deficits, which were of substantial effect size for people who had been hospitalized, but also for mild but biologically confirmed cases who reported no breathing difficulty.

This scale of the 'long COVID-19' observed deficits was substantial; the 0.57 global composite score reduction for the hospitalized with ventilator sub-group was equivalent to the average 10-year decline in global performance between the ages of 20 to 70 within this dataset.

These researchers concluded by saying 'further work is required to interrelate the deficits to underlying neurological changes and to disambiguate the associated pathological processes and cross-compare to other respiratory viruses.'