About half a year since being diagnosed with COVID-19, one in three patients had suffered a neurological or psychiatric illness, which are mostly mood disorders, strokes, and dementia, a study revealed. (6-month neurological and psychiatric outcomes in 236 379 survivors of COVID-19: a retrospective cohort study using electronic health records) 

Around one in nine patients or 12.8 percent were stricken with such illnesses for the first time, and this includes depression and anxiety, a common diagnosis among them. Comparing them to people from other control groups who had the flu or other non-COVID respiratory illnesses, unprecedented neuropsychiatric disorders were about twice as high.

Researchers Find Problematic Rates of Neurological Complications

The findings, published in The Lancet Psychiatry, utilized real-world health data on millions of people to measure the incidence of 13 brain conditions. Substance use, mood, and anxiety disorders were the most prevalent.

However, researchers also discovered troubling rates of severe neurological complications, particularly in patients who were seriously afflicted with COVID-19. Among all COVID-19 patients, 0.6 percent developed brain hemorrhage, 0.7 percent had dementia, and 2.1 percent an ischemic stroke.

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The study's size gives validation to the findings, confirming what has been speculated in other studies. Researchers looked into electronic health records of 81 million U.S. parents and found 236,379 people diagnosed with COVID-19.

They compared these afflicted people to three cohorts of those similar to them. One cohort had the flu, another had a respiratory illness, including pneumonia and sinusitis, and one more cohort included people admitted to hospitals for conditions unrelated to COVID-19, such as gallstones or bone fractures.

Study Seen to Help Determine COVID-19's Effects on the Brain

Researchers hope the comparison would help identify and isolate COVID-19 as a cause and obtain data on its effects on the brain.

After noting the patient's ethnicity, age, sex, existing health conditions, they had a 44 percent higher risk of mental health and neurological conditions after COVID-19 than flu, and a 19 percent higher risk after COVID-19 than after other respiratory ailments.

Two exceptions, however, were noted. Researchers did not observe a higher risk of Parkinson's Disease and Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare disorder that brings weakness and tingling to the body after contracting viral infections when the immune system tackles the nerves.

The new study strengthens past research that found that brain disorders increased with the illness' severity, affecting people who need hospitalization and increasing further in those who required intensive care. While 33.6 percent of people suffered from a neuropsychiatric illness, this risk ballooned to 46.4% among COVID-19 patients in intensive care.

New Insight on Differentiating Psychiatric and Neurological Complications

This research offered new insight into the distinction between psychiatric and neurological complications. People with a very severe bout with COVID-19 had an increased risk of dementia or stroke, but having depression or anxiety covers the entire spectrum of illness severity.

Neurological disorders, the researchers noted, can be easily tied to the effects of the virus on the brain. Scientists said the virus can break into the brain through the olfactory bulb, which decodes taste and smell. Body inflammation likewise affects blood vessels in the brain, leading to stroke-triggering blood clots, delirium, or dementia.

Medical records may tell researchers a patient previously suffered a stroke or dementia, but they could not determine if the patient would have a recurrence of the illness or if COVID-19 caused the affliction. A longer follow-up, they said, was necessary to answer those issues.

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