
A new study has made a shocking revelation. Covid-19 severely impacts the body. However, a new study states that it may shrink the brain's gray matter, specifically in areas of the brain involved in smell and memory processing.
As a part of the study, researchers looked at brain alterations in 785 UK Biobank people aged 51-81 years. All these people had their brain scanned twice. Out of these, 401 cases tested positive for Covid between their two scans, with an average of 141 days between diagnosis and second scan.
The remaining 384 participants had no sign of Covid. However, they closely matched the infected participants in terms of age, sex and Covid risk factors.
These participants tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies.
All these participants had to also go through a second brain scan for the study.This was done so that the researchers could pinpoint how and where their brains differed.
The study has been published in the journal Nature.
Dr Serena Spudich, chief of neurological infections and global neurology at the Yale School of Medicine, in a report said, "To me, this is pretty convincing evidence that something changes in brains of this overall group of people with Covid."
She further added, “To make a conclusion that this has some long-term clinical implications for the patients I think is a stretch. We don’t want to scare the public and have them think, ‘Oh, this is proof that everyone’s going to have brain damage and not be able to function."
(With inputs from agencies)