All levels of COVID infection come with cognitive impairment, study says

As we get further from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, our knowledge about the virus expands. A new study from the UK suggests in the illness' wake, cognitive functions may suffer.

What started out as a COVID "long-hauler" symptom, has been found in the short term patients, even those who had a mild case of the illness. It’s called brain fog, and it’s commonly used to describe sluggish, fuzzy thinking. Research out of the UK gives us a look behind the fog.

“It's not in your head, but it's in your head,” said Dr. Sheryl Williams, a hospitalist and Medical Director of Infection Prevention at BSA. “It’s a physical change that's happening to your cognition. It's not like you can't add two and two and get four, but you're foggy. You're just not thinking right.”

In the study, just over 81,000 participants filled out a COVID questionnaire and completed nine tests used to measure different aspects of human cognition. The results found functions like reasoning, problem solving, working memory, emotional processing are all affected.

“It's not an isolated, patient-by-patient thing. It is a large proportion of people who had COVID,” said Dr. Williams.

On top of that, there’s a scale of impairment quantified by IQ. Those who had respiratory symptoms but made it through on their own at home saw about a 1 point drop. Those who were put on a ventilator, went down 7 points.

“The NIH (National Institutes of Health) has just received $1.15 billion dedicated to studying this long COVID phenomenon,” Dr. Williams said. “I think that this study itself [is] simply is another piece of information added to this puzzle that's all saying the same thing.”

Experts are still stressing that the way to avoid sickness and cognitive fog is to get vaccinated. The more shots in arms, they say, the closer we are to stopping virus mutation and putting COVID spread on ice.