UK researchers warn Covid-19 patients with mild symptoms could experience brain disorders

(Karachi) UK neurologists have warned that coronavirus patients suffering mild symptoms or those recovering from the disease might experience potentially deadly brain disorder.

Publishing the paper in the journal Brain on Wednesday, neurologists said that there is an increase in a life-threatening condition called acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (Adem) during the first wave of infections in Britain.

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As part of the research, British neurologists examined and analyzed 43 Covid-19 patients whose complications ranged from brain inflammation and delirium to nerve damage and stroke. The patients included 24 males and 19 females with ages ranging from 16 to 85 years. Among them, 10 patients had a parainfectious or septic encephalopathy with delirium.

The paper stated that coronavirus is associated with a wide spectrum of neurological syndromes that affects the whole neuraxis, including the cerebral vasculature and in some cases, responding to immunotherapies. However, this complication is not related to the severity of the disease.

Commenting on the matter, senior author on the study Michael Zandi said: “We’re seeing things in the way Covid-19 affects the brain that we haven’t seen before with other viruses.”

She added, “What we’ve seen with some of these Adem patients, and in other patients, is you can have severe neurology, you can be quite sick, but actually have trivial lung disease.”

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“We want clinicians around the world to be alert to these complications of coronavirus,” she mentioned.

With millions of Covid-19 deaths across the world, scientists race to develop a vaccine to prevent the virus from spreading further. Most of the renowned pharmaceutical companies globally have begun trials, some entering stage 3 trials.

So far, 547,430 people have died of the disease worldwide while 11,984,936 have been infected. Besides, 58,246 patients are in critical condition while 6,929,661 people recovered from the virus. The highest number of patients were reported in United States with 3,097,538 cases followed by Brazil with 1,674,655 infections and India with 746,506 cases.