9 ms·

Scientists warn of potential wave of Covid-linked brain damage

89 points by stevenjgarner 6y ago

stevenjgarner 6y ago
I had delirium to the point I could not construct a thought, together with severe body pain and a dry cough back on January 19, 20 in a hotel room in Minnesota. Finally was able to get an antibodies test in July, which came back negative - antibody levels probably dropped too low by then? https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/06/chinese-study-antibodies-covid-19-patients-fade-quickly https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/06/chinese-...
- Mikeb85 6y ago
  Yeah, pretty much any kind of high fever can cause temporary delirium and body aches. Whether caused by Covid, influenza or a bacterial infection.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  (1) you don't always develop antibodies; (2) you don't always develop a lot of them if you do; (3) you don't necessarily create them in a given time frame, some people are faster, others slower. Typically it will take at least 3 to 4 weeks post infection before antibodies will show up. (4) tests are never perfect. (5) you may have had something else entirely.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    >you don't always develop antibodies I'm not sure this is accurate. Testing negative to a serology test just means that the test tested different proteins than your body did. If you recover, you've created antibodies.
    - tim333 6y ago
      Recovery can be from T cells too https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/no-antibodies-could-still-have-had-covid-fighting-t-cells/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/no-antibodie...
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      > I'm not sure this is accurate. I'm pretty sure it is, and the CDC seems to agree with me: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/testing/serology-overview.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/testing/serology-o... "Some people may take even longer to develop antibodies, and some people who are infected may not ever develop antibodies." This is a well known phenomenon in other diseases as well, why should COVID-19 be the exception here? > If you recover, you've created antibodies. No, that is not a valid line of reasoning. There is a high likelihood that you did, but not a 1:1 correspondence.
- _wldu 6y ago
  If you did have COVID-19. You may have no antibodies after three to four months, but T cell immunity. "Our results indicate that roughly twice as many people have developed T-cell immunity compared with those who we can detect antibodies in." https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-immunity-covid-higher-shown.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-immunity-covid-higher...
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  Did you get a chest scan? CoVID cases are easily detected though CT scans of the chest, where viral pneumonia can be obvious.
  - LeoNatan25 6y ago
    Not all infected develop the viral pneumonia, and not all that do have such damage that won’t heal in 6-7 months.
- noja 6y ago
  Sleep loss?
- cvhashim 6y ago
  The brain is deprived of oxygen due to lack of breathing
jjcon 6y ago
More sensationalism - this is possible anytime an illness causes fever, COVID isn’t special in this regard at all
- Frost1x 6y ago
  I guess COVID is special in the fact that COVID is widespread and causes high fever in a significant number of symptomatic individuals. The flu also commonly causes high fevers, however, it isn't spreading at the rate COVID is, so ultimately, due to the widespread nature of COVID, it seems reasonable to link these two concerns. An underlying recent theme has been to consider long term consequences this disease may have on societies across the world due to its scale, as well as those individuals health. We're going to have a lot more people seriously ill than we typically do with previously known infections and diseases and that will have notable impacts. From the article: >“My worry is that we have millions of people with COVID-19 now. And if in a year’s time we have 10 million recovered people, and those people have cognitive deficits ... then that’s going to affect their ability to work and their ability to go about activities of daily living,” Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist at Western University in Canada, told Reuters in an interview. We see what the short term consequences are, now we should also consider potential long term consequences of this very widespread disease.
  - voisin 6y ago
    We can’t even agree to take the steps to solve the problem in the short term that is staring us in the face. What are the odds that talking about probabilities of long term issues will suddenly motivate people (or, more importantly, the levels of government) to make the right decisions?
    - katbyte 6y ago
      Speak for your own country - many others agree and are doing quite well in the face of this pandemic.
    - Frost1x 6y ago
      Fully agree however the fundamental science shouldn't be concerned with the fact many are ignoring science. It's science's job to do the best it can to discover the facts which provide the fundamental information needed for useful actionable changes. Someone still needs to develop actionable policy based on that information, and then we have to decide as a society which actions we want to take. Various scientists have provided short term control solutions and are working on even more of them. We've seen those solutions around the world effectively curbing the spread. Different socieities and their governments have chosen what to do or not do with that information, and now you see the results across the world, depending on what people chose to do with that information. If we understand long term implications as well as short term, this provides even more information to make useful actionable policy decisions.
AnthonBerg 6y ago
This is the paper in question: The emerging spectrum of COVID-19 neurology: clinical, radiological and laboratory findings, published in Brain, https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awaa240 https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awaa240
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  It's worrying: The high incidence of acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, particularly with haemorrhagic change, is striking.
aftbit 6y ago
I had never heard of encephalitis lethargica before. Fascinating and a bit frightening. >Although there were neuropathological differences in the brains of patients who died of encephalitis lethargica compared with those who died of influenza encephalitis, von Economo could not deny that there seemed to be an epidemiological connection between influenza and encephalitis lethargica. Based on experimental studies using brain tissue from deceased patients, von Economo concluded that encephalitis lethargica was caused by an infectious virus. He, and other clinicians at the time, proposed that influenza might predispose a person to infection with encephalitis lethargica, possibly by increasing the permeability of the nasal mucous membranes allowing the encephalitic virus to enter more easily. https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/140/8/2246/3970828 https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/140/8/2246/3970828
kylebenzle 6y ago
Further evidence Trump got Covid back in February.
- LeoNatan25 6y ago
  Back in 1946.
mrfusion 6y ago
Just to keep things in perspective. More than 25% of New Yorkers have had COVID. As far as I know the recovered are mostly doing fine. I mean we don’t see hundreds of thousands going on disability. https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/04/27/coronavirus-antibodies-present-in-nearly-25-of-all-nyc-residents/ https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/04/27/coronavirus-antibodi...
- hvac 6y ago
  >More than 25% of New Yorkers have had COVID This doesn't follow, though. You can test positive for SARS2 antibodies and - either through asymptomatic infection or false positive - not have had COVID-19. The UCL study focused on the disease, not the virus. "The virus causing Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2, was not detected in the cerebrospinal brain fluid of any of the patients tested, suggesting the virus did not directly attack the brain to cause the neurological illness."
mrfusion 6y ago
Airplanes can crash sometimes. The result is horrible. Usually all lives lost. But we still fly. Why? It all comes down to the numbers. The crashes are rare. What are the numbers here?
- lghh 6y ago
  Airplane crashes are not contagious.
  - mrfusion 6y ago
    Just to clarify, you’re saying because airplane crashes aren’t contagious, numbers don’t help us reason about COVID risks? I for one would like to know if brain damage is a 5% risk or a .0005% risk. You wouldn’t?
    - ForHackernews 6y ago
      Sure, but it's not just your own personal risk tolerance. Getting on a plane involves accepting risk for yourself; taking covid risks involves risk to yourself and also imposing risks on others.
      - mrfusion 6y ago
        I sort of disagree. Unfortunately many things we do put other people at risk. Driving for one. I think people with especially high risk need to be looking out for themselves at this point. It’s not reasonable to ask the entire world to put their lives on hold. (I know this is an unpopular opinion but it’s something we all have to address at some point)
      - Marsymars 6y ago
        I expect a hefty number of people would be willing to undergo controlled variolation for covid, where they'd be of no risk to others.
    - makomk 6y ago
      This has become a standard, widespread talking point for why it's obviously immoral to accept any Covid-19 risk whatsoever as a trade-off for anything else, even though we don't treat other death or injury risks this way.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gdubs 6y ago
I posted this a little late last night, and it didn’t get a lot of attention — but this interview with Larry Brilliant is really good. In particular how quickly our knowledge of Covid is changing: “The unexpected things that it’s doing are not epidemiological—they are virological. In March, we were just beginning to see these horrific CT scans or x-rays of people with ARDS, acute respiratory distress syndrome, where they had these big circles of holes in their lungs, and we were thinking this is pretty much a respiratory disease. Since then we have learned that this virus attacks almost every organ in the body. The joke is that it’s from nose to toes, because you lose your sense of smell and you can get "Covid toes," the swelling of your toes and your fingers that look like frostbite” https://www.wired.com/story/larry-brilliant-on-how-well-are-we-fighting-covid-19/ https://www.wired.com/story/larry-brilliant-on-how-well-are-...
chiefalchemist 6y ago
The majority of severe Covid 19 cases involve one or more pre-existing conditions. The article makes no mention of this. I'm not questioning the scourge of Covid-19. I'm not questioning if it leads to side effects. These things are real. But it's important to understand if Covid-19,is acting alone or not. For deaths, it rarely acts alone. Covid-19 does well to exploit weakness - diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, COPD, and so on. Perhaps the same is true for neurological side-effects?

89 points by stevenjgarner 6y ago

I had delirium to the point I could not construct a thought, together with severe body pain and a dry cough back on January 19, 20 in a hotel room in Minnesota. Finally was able to get an antibodies test in July, which came back negative - antibody levels probably dropped too low by then? https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/06/chinese-study-antibodies-covid-19-patients-fade-quickly https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/06/chinese-...

Mikeb85 6y ago
Yeah, pretty much any kind of high fever can cause temporary delirium and body aches. Whether caused by Covid, influenza or a bacterial infection.
jacquesm 6y ago
(1) you don't always develop antibodies; (2) you don't always develop a lot of them if you do; (3) you don't necessarily create them in a given time frame, some people are faster, others slower. Typically it will take at least 3 to 4 weeks post infection before antibodies will show up. (4) tests are never perfect. (5) you may have had something else entirely.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  >you don't always develop antibodies I'm not sure this is accurate. Testing negative to a serology test just means that the test tested different proteins than your body did. If you recover, you've created antibodies.
  - tim333 6y ago
    Recovery can be from T cells too https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/no-antibodies-could-still-have-had-covid-fighting-t-cells/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/no-antibodie...
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    > I'm not sure this is accurate. I'm pretty sure it is, and the CDC seems to agree with me: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/testing/serology-overview.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/testing/serology-o... "Some people may take even longer to develop antibodies, and some people who are infected may not ever develop antibodies." This is a well known phenomenon in other diseases as well, why should COVID-19 be the exception here? > If you recover, you've created antibodies. No, that is not a valid line of reasoning. There is a high likelihood that you did, but not a 1:1 correspondence.
_wldu 6y ago
If you did have COVID-19. You may have no antibodies after three to four months, but T cell immunity. "Our results indicate that roughly twice as many people have developed T-cell immunity compared with those who we can detect antibodies in." https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-immunity-covid-higher-shown.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-immunity-covid-higher...
heavyset_go 6y ago
Did you get a chest scan? CoVID cases are easily detected though CT scans of the chest, where viral pneumonia can be obvious.
- LeoNatan25 6y ago
  Not all infected develop the viral pneumonia, and not all that do have such damage that won’t heal in 6-7 months.
noja 6y ago
Sleep loss?
cvhashim 6y ago
The brain is deprived of oxygen due to lack of breathing

jjcon 6y ago

More sensationalism - this is possible anytime an illness causes fever, COVID isn’t special in this regard at all

Frost1x 6y ago
I guess COVID is special in the fact that COVID is widespread and causes high fever in a significant number of symptomatic individuals. The flu also commonly causes high fevers, however, it isn't spreading at the rate COVID is, so ultimately, due to the widespread nature of COVID, it seems reasonable to link these two concerns. An underlying recent theme has been to consider long term consequences this disease may have on societies across the world due to its scale, as well as those individuals health. We're going to have a lot more people seriously ill than we typically do with previously known infections and diseases and that will have notable impacts. From the article: >“My worry is that we have millions of people with COVID-19 now. And if in a year’s time we have 10 million recovered people, and those people have cognitive deficits ... then that’s going to affect their ability to work and their ability to go about activities of daily living,” Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist at Western University in Canada, told Reuters in an interview. We see what the short term consequences are, now we should also consider potential long term consequences of this very widespread disease.
- voisin 6y ago
  We can’t even agree to take the steps to solve the problem in the short term that is staring us in the face. What are the odds that talking about probabilities of long term issues will suddenly motivate people (or, more importantly, the levels of government) to make the right decisions?
  - katbyte 6y ago
    Speak for your own country - many others agree and are doing quite well in the face of this pandemic.
  - Frost1x 6y ago
    Fully agree however the fundamental science shouldn't be concerned with the fact many are ignoring science. It's science's job to do the best it can to discover the facts which provide the fundamental information needed for useful actionable changes. Someone still needs to develop actionable policy based on that information, and then we have to decide as a society which actions we want to take. Various scientists have provided short term control solutions and are working on even more of them. We've seen those solutions around the world effectively curbing the spread. Different socieities and their governments have chosen what to do or not do with that information, and now you see the results across the world, depending on what people chose to do with that information. If we understand long term implications as well as short term, this provides even more information to make useful actionable policy decisions.

AnthonBerg 6y ago

This is the paper in question: The emerging spectrum of COVID-19 neurology: clinical, radiological and laboratory findings, published in Brain, https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awaa240 https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awaa240

HarryHirsch 6y ago
It's worrying: The high incidence of acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, particularly with haemorrhagic change, is striking.

aftbit 6y ago

I had never heard of encephalitis lethargica before. Fascinating and a bit frightening. >Although there were neuropathological differences in the brains of patients who died of encephalitis lethargica compared with those who died of influenza encephalitis, von Economo could not deny that there seemed to be an epidemiological connection between influenza and encephalitis lethargica. Based on experimental studies using brain tissue from deceased patients, von Economo concluded that encephalitis lethargica was caused by an infectious virus. He, and other clinicians at the time, proposed that influenza might predispose a person to infection with encephalitis lethargica, possibly by increasing the permeability of the nasal mucous membranes allowing the encephalitic virus to enter more easily. https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/140/8/2246/3970828 https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/140/8/2246/3970828

kylebenzle 6y ago

Further evidence Trump got Covid back in February.

LeoNatan25 6y ago
Back in 1946.

mrfusion 6y ago

Just to keep things in perspective. More than 25% of New Yorkers have had COVID. As far as I know the recovered are mostly doing fine. I mean we don’t see hundreds of thousands going on disability. https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/04/27/coronavirus-antibodies-present-in-nearly-25-of-all-nyc-residents/ https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/04/27/coronavirus-antibodi...

hvac 6y ago
>More than 25% of New Yorkers have had COVID This doesn't follow, though. You can test positive for SARS2 antibodies and - either through asymptomatic infection or false positive - not have had COVID-19. The UCL study focused on the disease, not the virus. "The virus causing Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2, was not detected in the cerebrospinal brain fluid of any of the patients tested, suggesting the virus did not directly attack the brain to cause the neurological illness."

mrfusion 6y ago

Airplanes can crash sometimes. The result is horrible. Usually all lives lost. But we still fly. Why? It all comes down to the numbers. The crashes are rare. What are the numbers here?

lghh 6y ago
Airplane crashes are not contagious.
- mrfusion 6y ago
  Just to clarify, you’re saying because airplane crashes aren’t contagious, numbers don’t help us reason about COVID risks? I for one would like to know if brain damage is a 5% risk or a .0005% risk. You wouldn’t?
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    Sure, but it's not just your own personal risk tolerance. Getting on a plane involves accepting risk for yourself; taking covid risks involves risk to yourself and also imposing risks on others.
    - mrfusion 6y ago
      I sort of disagree. Unfortunately many things we do put other people at risk. Driving for one. I think people with especially high risk need to be looking out for themselves at this point. It’s not reasonable to ask the entire world to put their lives on hold. (I know this is an unpopular opinion but it’s something we all have to address at some point)
    - Marsymars 6y ago
      I expect a hefty number of people would be willing to undergo controlled variolation for covid, where they'd be of no risk to others.
  - makomk 6y ago
    This has become a standard, widespread talking point for why it's obviously immoral to accept any Covid-19 risk whatsoever as a trade-off for anything else, even though we don't treat other death or injury risks this way.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

gdubs 6y ago

I posted this a little late last night, and it didn’t get a lot of attention — but this interview with Larry Brilliant is really good. In particular how quickly our knowledge of Covid is changing: “The unexpected things that it’s doing are not epidemiological—they are virological. In March, we were just beginning to see these horrific CT scans or x-rays of people with ARDS, acute respiratory distress syndrome, where they had these big circles of holes in their lungs, and we were thinking this is pretty much a respiratory disease. Since then we have learned that this virus attacks almost every organ in the body. The joke is that it’s from nose to toes, because you lose your sense of smell and you can get "Covid toes," the swelling of your toes and your fingers that look like frostbite” https://www.wired.com/story/larry-brilliant-on-how-well-are-we-fighting-covid-19/ https://www.wired.com/story/larry-brilliant-on-how-well-are-...

chiefalchemist 6y ago

The majority of severe Covid 19 cases involve one or more pre-existing conditions. The article makes no mention of this. I'm not questioning the scourge of Covid-19. I'm not questioning if it leads to side effects. These things are real. But it's important to understand if Covid-19,is acting alone or not. For deaths, it rarely acts alone. Covid-19 does well to exploit weakness - diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, COPD, and so on. Perhaps the same is true for neurological side-effects?