A new study found that COVID-19 infection can cause cognitive deficits that persist for over a year and lower IQ scores in severe cases.
Those with persistent symptoms that resolved had small cognitive deficits similar to those with a shorter illness duration.
In a large-scale observational study published on Feb. 29 in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), researchers invited 800,000 people with varying levels of COVID-19 exposure and duration to take an online cognitive assessment and follow-up survey.
Cognitive difficulties have been implicated in numerous syndromes following COVID-19, including long COVID, suggesting infection may have lasting effects on the mental processes of the brain.
The study’s authors hypothesized there would be measurable cognitive deficits after COVID-19 that would scale with the severity and duration of the illness.
They also speculated that objective impairments in executive and memory function, especially poor memory and brain fog, would be observable in those with persistent symptoms.
Using an assessment tool for cognitive function, researchers estimated global cognitive scores among participants with a history of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection who had symptoms for at least 12 weeks—whether resolved or not—and among a control group of uninfected participants.Â
While cognitive and memory deficits were small for people with mild infection who recovered from COVID-19 quickly, impairments were more pronounced in those with severe disease.
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