Can Coronavirus Cause ‘Brain Fog’

The journal Nature published an article on July 7, 2021, indicating researchers are learning how COVID-19 damages the human brain. In addition, new evidence suggests that the coronavirus’s assault on the brain could be multipronged.

An infection with the SARS-CoV-2 beta coronavirus can cause memory loss, strokes, and other effects on the brain.

SARS-CoV-2 might attack certain brain cells directly, reduce blood flow to brain tissue, or trigger the production of immune molecules that can harm brain cells.

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers speculated that the virus might cause damage by somehow entering the brain and infecting neurons, the cells responsible for transmitting and processing information.

But studies have since indicated that the virus has difficulty getting past the brain’s defense system and that it doesn’t necessarily attack neurons in any significant way.

With millions of people already affected — neurological symptoms appeared in 80% of the people hospitalized with COVID-19 who were surveyed in one study — researchers hope that the growing evidence base will point the way to better treatments.

The question Serena Spudich, a neurologist at Yale University in New Haven, CT, asked, “Can we intervene early to address these abnormalities so that people don’t have long-term problems?”

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