TUESDAY, Oct. 8, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Damage to the brainstem could be behind the physical and psychological effects of Long COVID , a new study suggests. Brain scans of 30 Long COVID patients found they had damage to the region of the brainstem associated with breathlessness, fatigue and anxiety, researchers reported Oct.
7 in the journal Brain . “The brainstem is the critical junction box between our conscious selves and what is happening in our bodies,” said co-lead researcher James Rowe , a senior research fellow with the University of Cambridge Department of Clinical Neurosciences. “The ability to see and understand how the brainstem changes in response to COVID-19 will help explain and treat the long-term effects more effectively.
” Post-mortem studies of people who died of severe COVID-19 early in the pandemic showed changes in their brainstem, researchers said in background notes. “People who were very sick early in the pandemic showed long-lasting brain changes, likely caused by an immune response to the virus. But measuring that immune response is difficult in living people,” Rowe said.
“Normal hospital type MRI scanners can’t see inside the brain with the kind of chemical and physical detail we need.” So, the research team turned to more powerful MRI machines called 7-Tesla scanners, which found that COVID infection caused inflammation damage in multiple regions of the brainstem. These abnormalities appeared several weeks after hospital admissi.