New Delhi New Delhi: A new study on Tuesday revealed that damage to the brainstem – the brain's 'control centre' – is behind the long-term physical and mental effects of severe Covid-19 infection. Researchers at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford used ultra-high-resolution scanners that can see living brains in fine detail to observe the harmful effects of Covid in the brains of 30 people hospitalized with severe infection at the beginning of the pandemic. Can go. Their results, published in the journal Brain, revealed how SARS-CoV-2 affects brainstem regions associated with shortness of breath, fatigue and anxiety.
“The brainstem is the vital junction box between our conscious self and what's happening in our body,” said Professor James Rowe of the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, who co-led the research. “The ability to see and understand how the brainstem changes in response to COVID will help to more effectively understand and treat long-term effects,” Rowe said. Fatigue, shortness of breath and chest pain were long-term, troubling symptoms among many patients hospitalized at the beginning of the pandemic. The team hypothesized that these symptoms were partly the result of damage to key brainstem nuclei, which persists long after the infection has passed.
The study found that several areas of the brainstem – the medulla oblongata, the pons and the midbrain – showed abnormalities consistent with a neuroinflammatory response. These appeared several weeks after hospitalization and in brain areas that control breathing. Changes in the brainstem were also linked to an increase in depression and anxiety in Covid survivors.
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