COVID-19 started off in December 2019 in China and since then it spread to different parts of the world and soon became a pandemic. It was in the beginning when the health experts did not have a clear idea about the symptoms and what long term effects it could have. Many people reported about tiredness and excessive hair fall problems, a recent study has linked memory loss and brain fog to be long term effects of the disease.
Experts from the Mt. Sinai Health System had analyzed data from 740 participants and many of them had contracted COVID-19 and some of them had only received a COVID-19 vaccine. As per the average of the patients, there was no history of dementia and 49 and 63 percent were women. Their COVID-19 diagnosis was eight months. The team had analyzed the patient data and from April 2020 through May 2021 to measure prevalence of post-COVID-19 cognitive impairment and its relation with the severity of the disease.
The patients who were treated as outpatient, inpatient or at emergency departments had reported about their respective demographic characteristics. The cognitive functioning was tested with the help of neuropsychological measures that were well-validated and it included counting forward and backward. It was also found that the hospitalized patients were more likely to have difficulty in attention, fluency and memory recall when compared to the outpatient group.
It was also found that the older adults along with some of the population can be prone to cognitive impairment after they go through a critical illness. Surprisingly, the younger individuals had also exhibited cognitive dysfunction after several months they recovered from COVID-19. Meanwhile, the researchers say that more studies are needed to identify the risk factors that are related to cognitive dysfunction and if there are any options for rehabilitation. Ever since the pandemic began, a number of long term side effects have been seen and reported in recovered patients.
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