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UCSF scientists detect anomalies in people with post-COVID 'brain fog' - San Francisco Chronicle

UCSF scientists detect anomalies in people with post-COVID 'brain fog' - San Francisco Chronicle

UCSF scientists detect anomalies in people with post-COVID 'brain fog' - San Francisco Chronicle
Jan 21, 2022 1 min, 23 secs

Cliff Morrison got COVID-19 in March 2020 and now struggles with “brain fog,” among other long COVID symptoms.

The cognitive complaints usually focus on “executive functions” — remembering recent events, recalling names and other details, concentration, speed of thought — all of which are supported by the brain’s frontal networks, said Hellmuth, noting that people can also experience such difficulties for reasons other than COVID.

Study participants with brain fog had an average of 2.5 cognitive risk factors — such as diabetes, high blood pressure or a history of alcohol use — while those without brain fog had less than one risk factor, on average.

The researchers — including those at New York’s Weill Cornell Medicine, as well as UCSF’s Alexandra Apple, Steven Deeks and Samuel Pleasure, among others — studied 17 participants who had had COVID an average of 10 months earlier but had never been hospitalized for it.

All but four had persistent cognitive symptoms since becoming infected.

The findings are just one step in a long road toward understanding post-COVID brain fog, Hellmuth said, noting that the anomalies “may not be causing the cognitive changes” but are clearly associated with the condition.

But Nath said the study’s strengths are that the researchers were able to document “the possibility that some of the (cognitive) manifestations may be immune mediated” — influenced by an immune response gone awry — among a group of non-hospitalized patients with mild COVID symptoms.

Cliff Morrison of Oakland has had persistent brain fog since being diagnosed with COVID in April 2020.

A patient of Hellmuth’s who is enrolled in several UCSF studies of long COVID, Morrison doesn’t know if the researchers included his cerebrospinal fluid in their research.

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