Study Finds COVID-19 May Lower Intelligence

July 30, 2021 -- Infection from COVID-19 whitethorn person a important antagonistic effect connected intelligence, according to a caller large-scale study from the United Kingdom, findings that are accordant with reports of “brain fog” among long-haul COVID-19 patients.

Researchers analyzed information from 81,337 radical who took the Great British Intelligence Test successful 2020. Of those, astir 13,000 reported they had contracted COVID-19, and 275 of those had completed the trial earlier and aft infection.

Those who had antecedently had the coronavirus recovered it harder to implicit tasks related to reasoning, problem-solving, and spatial planning, the authors said. Researchers controlled for age, education, and wide mood.

“These results accord with reports of long-COVID, wherever ‘brain fog,’ occupation concentrating, and trouble uncovering the close words are common,” the authors wrote. “Recovery from COVID-19 corruption whitethorn beryllium associated with peculiarly pronounced problems successful aspects of higher cognitive oregon ‘executive’ function.”

Working representation span and affectional processing did not look to beryllium affected.

How atrocious the cognitive diminution was appeared to beryllium linked to however superior the corruption was. Researchers said those who had been placed connected a ventilator portion sick showed the astir important effects. On average, their people dropped 7 IQ points.

“The standard of the observed shortage was not insubstantial,” the authors wrote. But they said encephalon imaging is needed earlier steadfast conclusions tin beryllium drawn.

“It is important to beryllium cautious successful inferring a neurobiological oregon intelligence ground of the observed deficits without encephalon imaging data, though the appraisal tasks utilized present person been shown to representation to antithetic networks wrong the quality encephalon successful presumption of mean functional enactment and connectivity arsenic good arsenic structural web damage,” they wrote.

The researchers speculate that high fever and respiratory problems could person contributed to the cognitive decline. But those symptoms had agelong dissipated for astir radical successful the survey -- the authors noted lone 4.8% of them reported lingering symptoms.

The survey provides penetration into 1 portion of post-COVID -- a information that has been intimately tracked by the CDC. According to the agency, long-haul COVID-19 tin see a scope of lingering symptoms respective months aft infection, including shortness of breath, headache, associated oregon muscle pain, dizziness, and a hard clip reasoning oregon concentrating, different known arsenic “brain fog.”