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– The researchers also highlighted a certain atrophy of “gray matter”.
Covid-19 seems to be more tenacious than one might have thought. Nearly five years after the 2020 pandemic, scientists have looked into the after-effects that the coronavirus can cause, in all its forms and in all its variants. Recently, two studies, published successively in The Lancet journals et Nature Medicinespotted by The Worldclaimed that the cognitive abilities of affected patients were greatly impacted up to a year after infection, especially in older people.
One of the two case studies concerned 34 young people in good health, having been affected by Covid-19 in the previous months, while the second targeted 106 people aged 54 on average. In both conclusions, the scientists highlighted a prolonged alteration cognitive faculties, directly linked to the infection. “The infection can cause prolonged cognitive after-effects, most likely even mild”affirmed Mahmoud Zureik, professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin, to our colleagues.
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A notable decline in cognitive performance
“Covid-19 is not always a ‘one shot’ that we get rid of completely”continues the expert. Concretely, the after-effects identified would result in a notable drop cognitive performance. In both studies, the researchers also highlighted some atrophy of “gray matter”. It is a part of the nervous system that contains the bodies of neurons and is responsible, among other things, for our sensorimotor activity, as well as cognitive functions such as reading, calculation, attention or memory.
