COVID-19 leaves all kinds of legacies on our health, both on our bodies and on our brains. In one study Published on July 22 in Nature communicationResearchers report that life through the pandaemia is aging our brains or is now or not infected with COVID-19.
To investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the brain, researchers looked at brain scans of 1,000 people during and in front of the pandemic. They compared these with brain scans from other people who were taken during “normal” times as a model for typical brain aging.
Under the leadership of Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad of the University of Nottingham School of Medicine in the UK, the researchers looked at measures such as brain function, gray and white dust volume, the cognitive skills of a person and their chronological age. Gray matter is crucial for memory, emotions and movement, while white matter is essential to help nerves to transfer electrical signals.
The brain from the Pandemic era came about 5.5 months faster compared to the brains of those studied before the pandemic. The accelerated aging was documented in people who had COVID-19 infections and those who did not do that, which strongly suggests that other pandemic factors than organic or virus-driven factors-as high stress were also at work. In fact, the changes in gray and white matter were comparable to people who were not infected.
“This finding was interesting and rather unexpected,” says Mohammadi-Nejad. Other studies have already shown that the COVID-19 virus can change the brain worse, but “we discovered that participants who have simply experienced the pandemic period, regardless of infections, also showed signs of somewhat accelerated brain aging. This emphasizes that the broader experience of the pandemic, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc. Etc., etc., etc., etc. etc.
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The impact of the Pandemie seemed to be larger in certain groups – in particular men, the elderly and people with more compromised health, lower educational status and income, or unstable homes. People with less stable employment had an average of five months extra brain aging compared to people with higher employment status, while poorer health added for about four months of increased brain age compared to better health.
Only people who are infected with COVID-19 showed drops in cognitive skills.
But the fact that those who were not infected during the pandemic, also shown that accelerated aging reflects the need to recognize the wider health effects of the pandemic outside the obvious physical statistics on which doctors tend to concentrate. “Brain health can be influenced by daily activities and important social disruptions-as they experience during the Pandemie can even leave a stamp among healthy individuals,” says Mohammadi-Nejad. “This contributes to our understanding of public health by strengthening the importance of considering mentally, cognitive and social well -being in addition to traditional physical health indicators during the future planning of the crisis response.”
Although the study has not investigated specific ways to tackle the aging of the brain, he says that strategies known to maintain the health of the brain, such as a healthy diet, exercise, adequate sleep and social and cognitive interactions are important, especially in the context of stressful circumstances such as a pandemic. “Whether they can reverse the specific changes we have observed, still needs to be studied,” he says.
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