In addition to being a fairly nasty respiratory virus, #COVIDー19 can invade the central nervous system and/or cause profound neurological disease. Another reason why MORTALITY is not the only statistic to track or report.
A thread (most of these links HT @scrlovelife).
A thread (most of these links HT @scrlovelife).
A case series of 3 hospitals in Wuhan found that 36.4% of #COVIDー19 patients had central and/or peripheral neurological symptoms.
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
These symptoms included "headache, dizziness, impaired consciousness, ataxia, acute cerebrovascular disease, and epilepsy; hypogeusia, hyposmia, hypopsia neuralgia, and skeletal muscular symptoms." #COVIDー19
Some of the respiratory symptoms may be attributable to CENTRAL APNEA, that is, a dysfunction in the brainstem's ability to tell your lungs to breathe onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10… #COVIDー19
"According to the complaints of a survivor, the medical graduate student (24 years old) from Wuhan University, she must stay awake and breathe consciously and actively during the intensive care. She said that if she fell asleep, she might die b/c she had lost her natural breath."
"It is possible that the respiratory aspect of COVID-19 is so overwhelming in patients who end up dying that they don't live long enough "for the virus to cause damage to the brain," said Dr. Nath, who is director of the Section of Infections of the Nervous System at NINDS.
He added that deaths attributed to respiratory failure may in fact include brainstem involvement that is not apparent." journals.lww.com/neurotodayonli…
I'm interested in this because there is another illness that used to occur in epidemics, that also began as an upper respiratory infection, and could cause profound, long-run CNS and peripheral muscular symptoms: myalgic encephalomyelitis me-pedia.org/wiki/Epidemic_…
Whether post-enterovirus, post-EBV, post-SARS, post-COVID-19, we need to put much more effort into studying post-infectious (neuro) syndromes not only as isolated phenomena of distinct outbreaks but also as a whole.
After decades of underfunding #MECFS research, we are woefully unprepared to deal with the long-run fallout of #COVID-19, and I don't think we needed to be.
Being a good citizen, self-isolating at home and want to learn more? Watch my doc: netflix.com/title/80168300
Being a good citizen, self-isolating at home and want to learn more? Watch my doc: netflix.com/title/80168300
