Structural brain changes detected in novel long COVID imaging study

Oh Boy!  autism, here we come.  Thi is huge. Pathology had indicated surface damage to the brain in autism.  this is saying as much.  now do we have separation ofr vaccinated and non vaccinated/

We might be looking at micro scaring of the brain surface produced by a common element across vaccines.

This is starting to look far bigger than any of us ever imagined.  Is a nasty toxin passing through the blood system and ultimaterly dumping on the brain surface as happens with our skin?

Structural brain changes detected in novel long COVID imaging study

By Rich Haridy

November 26, 2023

Researchers looked at how COVID and long COVID correlated with microstructural changes to the brain

Rau et al

https://newatlas.com/medical/structural-brain-changes-detected-long-covid-imaging/?

New research to be presented at the Radiological Society of North America’s annual meeting is the first to reveal microstructural brain changes in long COVID patients compared to fully recovered patients and uninfected subjects. The findings indicate long COVID symptoms can be associated with changes to specific cerebral networks.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study comparing patients with long COVID to both a group without history of COVID-19 and a group that went through a COVID-19 infection but is subjectively unimpaired,” explains Alexander Rau, lead author on the study from University Hospital Freiburg in Germany.

The research utilized a relatively new brain imaging technique called diffusion microstructure imaging (DMI). The technique tracks the movement of water molecules through brain tissue to deliver a high-resolution picture of the microstructures of the brain.

Looking generally for brain lesions or abnormalities, the researchers detected no notable differences between COVID patients and those uninfected. However, zooming in on the microstructural brain differences revealed significant alterations in the COVID cohorts.

“Here, we noted gray matter alterations in both patients with long-COVID and those unimpaired after a COVID-19 infection,” says Rau “Interestingly, we not only noted widespread microstructural alterations in patients with long COVID, but also in those unimpaired after having contracted COVID-19.”

So what separated the long COVID patients from the fully recovered COVID patients?

The researchers discovered three long COVID symptom constellations (fatigue, loss of sense of smell, cognitive impairment) could be correlated with specific patterns of microstructural changes in the brain. So what distinguished long COVID patients from recovered patients seemed to be how the illness particularly reshaped the brain.

“Expression of post-COVID symptoms was associated with specific affected cerebral networks, suggesting a pathophysiological basis of this syndrome” Rau notes.

While the results affirm the real pathological foundations underpinning long COVID they do raise a number of questions the researchers hope to investigate in the future. For example, do these microstructural alterations improve over time as a long COVID patient’s symptoms change? And is there anything that predisposes a COVID patient to develop the brain changes that characterize long COVID?