Covid infection may not be responsible for memory problems & fatigue: Study

London: Headaches, memory problems, and fatigue — commonly known to continue post a Covid-19 infection — may be a result of inflammation in the rest of the body and not because SARS-CoV-2 infects the brain, claims a new research.

Early on in the pandemic, researchers surmised that direct infection of the brain could be the cause behind these neurological symptoms. Many studies have also proposed the effect of Covid virus on the brain symptoms. But a study by researchers at the Charite- Universitatsmedizin Berlin in Germany has now produced evidence to support the new theory.

“We took that as our hypothesis at the start, too. But so far, there has been no clear evidence that the coronavirus can persist in the brain, let alone proliferate,” said Dr Helena Radbruch, head of the Chronic Neuroinflammation working group at the Department of Neuropathology at Charite.

“For that, we would have needed to find evidence of intact virus particles in the brain, for example. Instead, the indications that the coronavirus could infect the brain come from indirect testing methods, so they aren’t entirely conclusive,” Radbruch added.

According to a second hypothesis, the neurological symptoms would instead be a kind of side effect of the strong immune response the body deploys to defend against the virus.

For the study, the team of researchers analysed various areas of the brain in 21 people who died in hospital settings, typically in an ICU, due to severe coronavirus infection. For comparison, the researchers studied nine patients who died of other causes after treatment in intensive care.

First, they looked to see whether the tissue showed any visible changes and hunted for any indication of coronavirus. Then they conducted a detailed analysis of genes and proteins to identify the specific processes that had taken place inside individual cells.