Even mild cases of COVID cause significant, measurable cognitive deficits (认知缺陷) compared to those never infected with the virus, according to one of the largest studies of its type. COVID brain fog is real, and it can drain six IQ points for at least a year. “The potential long-term effects of COVID-19 on cognitive function have been a concern for the public, healthcare professionals, and policymakers, but until now it has been difficult to objectively measure them in a large population sample,” explained Adam Hampshire, first author on the newly published study.
The research comes out of one of the world’s largest and longest running COVID studies, called REACT (Real-Time Assessment of Community Transmission). The project, which kicked off in April 2020, follows nearly three million people in England. The goal is to better understand who is suffering from long-term symptoms of COVID and what those symptoms actually are. This particular REACT investigation aimed at around 112,000 people who completed online assessments uniquely developed to measure cognitive domains that have been known to be affected by COVID. Each participant also supplied a COVID infection history allowing the researchers to compare cognitive findings with symptom duration and severity. Between three and four percent of the total group of people qualified as suffering from long COVID, reporting symptoms lasting more than 12 weeks. The majority of that long COVID group were still experiencing symptoms up to one year later.
Of those long COVID patients the researchers suggest their cognitive assessments showed deficits that correlated (关联的) with a drop in about six IQ points compared to those with no history of infection. The deficits were primarily detected in cognitive domains associated with memory, spatial (空间的) planning and verbal reasoning. More interestingly, the researchers found small but statistically significant differences in cognition between people who recovered quickly from short symptom duration of COVID and people with no history of infection. The cognitive assessments correlated with differences of about three IQ points.
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