Long covid, also known as COVID-19 sequelae, refers to cognitive-related sequelae that last for months or even more than a year after recovery. The most common sequelae are feeling fatigue for no reason, in addition to lack of motivation, anxiety, depression, poor sleep, and so on.
At present, with the prevalence of the new crown and the popularization of vaccines, the symptoms of infected people are becoming milder. Many asymptomatic infected people don't even know they have COVID-19. So will these mild cases also feel the sequelae of the new crown?
Recently, a study by the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom found that patients with mild COVID-19 experience symptoms of decreased concentration and memory 6 to 9 months after infection.
Image credit: From Brain Communications
The study, led by Dr Sijia Zhao from the Department of Psychology at the University of Oxford, analyzed data from cognitive tests from 136 participants recruited in a unified manner.
Of these, 53 participants were "mild" patients with COVID-19; the remaining 83 participants were never infected with COVID-19. Most of the participants were young people aged 20 to 30.
Participants were asked to complete a series of questionnaires and cognitive ability tests on the computer, which were related to daily life, attention, memory, reaction ability, planning ability, language ability, etc.
After completing the test, the researchers compared the test results of the infected COVID-19 and non-infected control groups.
They found that after just four minutes, the attention span of people infected with COVID-19 dropped significantly. Compared with young people who have not had COVID-19, people who have had COVID-19 have also experienced a greater and faster decline in their attention span.
That is to say, after being infected with the new crown, people's vigilance will decrease.
In addition, COVID-19 will also affect the patient's memory. In this study, participants were asked to look at some simple pictures and then test the accuracy of their memory of the pictures after twenty minutes.
It turned out that young people who had had COVID-19 were more forgetful, even though they themselves didn't realize they were more forgetful in their lives.
Thankfully, though, the decline in attention and memory found here is not great. It does not affect the patient's life, so the patient does not even feel the presence of sequelae.
And these symptoms may slowly disappear on their own over time. In most cases, an individual's episodic memory and attention span also largely return to normal after 6 and 9 months over time.
Dr. Zhao also admitted that many mild patients who participated in this test did not realize that they had cognitive decline. Therefore, there is no need to demonize the after-effects of the new crown and cause excessive anxiety.
Author of this paper
bibliography
[1] Sijia Zhao, Kengo Shibata, Peter J. Hellyer, William Trender, Sanjay Manohar, Adam Hampshire, Masud Husain, Rapid vigilance and episodic memory decrements in COVID-19 survivors[J], Brain Communications, Volume 4, Issue 1, 2022, fcab295, https://doi.org/10.1093/braincomms/fcab295
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