Helms and her colleagues published a small study in the New England Journal of Medicine documenting the neurological symptoms in their Covid-19 patients, ranging from cognitive difficulties to confusion. All are signs of “encephalopathy” (the general term for damage to the brain) – a trend that researchers in Wuhan had noticed in coronavirus patients there in February.
Now, more than 300 studies from around the world have found a prevalence of neurological abnormalities in Covid-19 patients, including mild symptoms like headaches, loss of smell (anosmia) and tingling sensations (arcoparasthesia), up to more severe outcomes such as aphasia (inability to speak), strokes and seizures. This is in addition to recent findings that the virus, which has been largely considered to be a respiratory disease, can also wreak havoc on the kidneys, liver, heart, and just about every organ system in the body...
“We don’t know yet if the encephalopathy is more severe with Covid-19 than with other viruses, but I can tell you we’ve been seeing quite a lot of it,” says neurologist Elissa Fory of the Henry Ford Foundation in Detroit, Michigan. “As the number of cases increases, you will start to see not only the common manifestations but also the uncommon manifestations – and we’re seeing them all at once, which is not something any of us have encountered in our lifetimes.”
Estimates of exact prevalence vary, but it seems that roughly 50% of patients diagnosed with Sars-CoV-2 – the virus responsible for causing the illness Covid-19 – have experienced neurological problems.