New Delhi: COVID-19 patients are likely to have neurological or psychiatric problems in the long run. At least one-third of COVID-19 patients received a neurological or psychiatric diagnosis within six months of infection, a study of over 2,30,000 patients said. Thirteen per cent of these had never received a neurological or psychiatric diagnosis before, it added.
The study was published in The Lancet Psychiatry journal on Wednesday. It was led by Oxford University researchers who claim that the SARS-CoV-2 virus causes serious disorders that affect the nervous system, which leaves patients in poor health months after they have recovered from COVID-19, ThePrint reported.
According to the researchers, COVID-19 patients are also likely to develop mood and anxiety disorders in the first three months after infection.
However, the Lancet study is the first to analyse the health records of 2,36,379 patients from the US-based TriNetX network — a global health research network — for a period of six months, the report added.
“These are real-world data from a large number of patients. They confirm the high rates of psychiatric diagnoses after Covid-19, and show that serious disorders affecting the nervous system (such as stroke and dementia) occur too,” Paul Harrison, lead author of the study, from the University of Oxford, was quoted as saying in a statement
“Although the individual risks for most disorders are small, the effect across the whole population may be substantial for health and social care systems due to the scale of the pandemic and that many of these conditions are chronic,” added Harrison.
The team also looked at people who experienced flu and other respiratory tract infections over the same time frame to help understand whether these neurological and mental health complications were linked specifically to COVID
They found that there was a 44 per cent greater risk of neurological and mental health diagnoses after COVID-19 than after the flu.
“Our results indicate that brain diseases and psychiatric disorders are more common after Covid-19 than after flu or other respiratory infections, even when patients are matched for other risk factors,” Max Taquet, a co-author of the study, from the University of Oxford was quoted as saying.
“We now need to see what happens beyond six months. The study cannot reveal the mechanisms involved, but does point to the need for urgent research to identify these, with a view to preventing or treating them,” Taquet added.
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