More than two million people in the UK are thought to have had – or still have – long Covid , where someone shows symptoms of the virus more than 12 weeks after being diagnosed. We may want to consign Covid-19 to history but the effects of the pandemic linger on, not least thanks to the latest XEC variant spreading in Europe. Scientists continue to study the long-term damage the virus does and a research team at the University of Cambridge is the latest to provide insight.
Using powerful technology, they suggest damage to the brainstem is “likely” to be responsible for symptoms of long Covid, such as breathlessness, fatigue and “brain fog”. Read Next Brain fog symptoms explained and what we know about its link to long Covid The more severe the illness the greater the damage. Normal hospital-type MRI scanners cannot see inside the brain with the kind of chemical and physical detail the scientists needed.
So they used ultra high-resolution scanners, known as 7-Tesla or 7T scanners , which show the living brain in fine detail, to examine hospitalised patients to see if brainstem abnormalities persist in the long term. The scanners were able to detect how immune cells are behaving, revealing that multiple regions of the brainstem, which acts as our “control centre” connecting the brain and spinal cord, had abnormalities associated with a neuroinflammatory response. Such changes were not seen in a control group of 51 people.
Patients with the biggest changes also s.