In a finding that unearths yet another way Long COVID can harm health, new research finds the condition may trigger thinking declines.
In a finding that unearths yet another way Long COVID can harm health, new research finds the condition may trigger thinking declines., the study involved cognitive testing on nearly 113,000 people in England.
It found that those with Long COVID scored 6 IQ points lower than people who had never been infected with the virus. Even folks who didn't suffer lingering symptoms after a bout of COVID scored slightly lower than people who had never been infected -- in this case, by 3 IQ points. Still, the differences in scores were small and experts stressed the findings don't mean that COVID causes profound deficits in thinking and memory. However, they do provide proof that the“These emerging and coalescing findings are generally highlighting that, yes, there is cognitive impairment in Long COVID survivors -- it's a real phenomenon,” James Jackson, a neuropsychologist at Vanderbilt Medical Center who wasn't involved in the study, told theLuckily, the latest study suggests that if people's Long COVID symptoms resolve themselves, the related thinking impairments might also ease. Study volunteers who had Long COVID for months before finally recovering eventually had testing scores similar to those who had experienced a quick recovery. Importantly, the standard variation on an IQ score is about 15 points, so a shift of 3, or even 6, points is not usually considered significant, theStill, Jackson, who wrote a book about Long COVID titled “Clearing the Fog,” said that while the tests “identify relatively mild deficits,” that can still make a difference in some cases. “If you're an engineer and you have a slight decline in executive functioning, that's a problem,” he noted. In the study, led by researchers at Imperial College London , nearly 113,000 completed an online cognitive test during the last five months of 2022. About 46,000 of the respondents said they had never had COVID, while another 46,000 who had been infected said their illness lasted less than four weeks. Meanwhile, about 3,200 people had post-Covid symptoms lasting four to 12 weeks after infection and about 3,900 people had symptoms that went beyond 12 weeks. Of those, 2,580 people were still having Long COVID symptoms when they took the test. The test consisted of eight tasks designed to evaluate skills such as spatial planning, verbal reasoning, word definitions and memory.Times that the study measured performance at only one point in time, so it was impossible to know if other stresses in people's lives had played a part in their test scores.vaccines and antiviral treatments were available. Meanwhile, people who had been vaccinated performed somewhat better than those who had not. Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, chief of research and development at the V.A. St. Louis Health Care System who co-wrote an editorial accompanying the study, said the findings raise many questions, including how significant the deficits were in real life.
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