Do you know that COVID-19 can cause your brain to shrink?

According to an Oxford University study, people who were infected with COVID-19 can have their brains shrunk especially in areas responsible for smell, emotion, and memory processing. Scientists from the same study mentioned that brain shrinkage due to COVID-19 was a common occurrence for everyone including those who required hospitalization or had less severe infections, which is backed by concrete evidence.

The research shows that after one contracted COVID-19, the brain would contract between 0.2% and 2% on average which leads to a decline and loss of brain functions. However, scientists are still in the midst of researching whether the effects could be partly reversed or cause a greater impact in the long term.

Nature, a British multidisciplinary journal, conducted research with 785 participants, aged 51 to 81 years old, on how COVID-19 affects the brain with 2 brain scans. Among the 785 participants, 401 people caught COVID-19 before. The second scan was conducted 141 days after the initial scan. This research highlighted people who caught COVID-19 are likely to suffer from mental fog which could be detrimental to one’s attention, concentration, information processing, and memory.

In the same study, researchers did not find out whether vaccinations could have impacted the brain condition. However, the UK Health Security Agency mentioned that 15 other research studies have concluded that vaccination could also contribute to the long terms symptoms of COVID-19 too.

Research studies have proven that COVID-19 has led to the shrinkage of the brain. However, COVID-19 was an unprecedented pandemic, and the research about the effects of COVID-19 is still in the infancy stage as there could be complications that are yet to be discovered.