{"id":1403885,"date":"2022-03-28T07:46:01","date_gmt":"2022-03-28T11:46:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1403885"},"modified":"2022-03-28T07:46:26","modified_gmt":"2022-03-28T11:46:26","slug":"memory-issues-affect-long-covid-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/memory-issues-affect-long-covid-patients\/","title":{"rendered":"Memory Issues Affect Long COVID Patients"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">12<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fmemory-issues-affect-long-covid-patients%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1403885&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p class=\"pdf-loader\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/t-memory\">Memory<\/a> and concentration problems haunt 7 in 10 patients with\u00a0<a class=\"rm-stats-tracked\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hopkinsmedicine.org\/health\/conditions-and-diseases\/coronavirus\/covid-long-haulers-long-term-effects-of-covid19\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">long COVID<\/a>, a pair of new studies indicate.<\/p>\n<p>The findings suggest that COVID-19 has a notable impact on brain <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/t-health\">health<\/a>, even if the precise underlying mechanisms remain unclear, British researchers said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe set out to explore whether some of the long-lasting issues in COVID \u2014 things like inflammation and abnormal blood clotting\u2014had an impact on people\u2019s ability to remember and make decisions,\u201d explained senior study author Lucy Cheke.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis was because we know from previous work that when there\u2019s a lot of\u00a0<a class=\"rm-stats-tracked\" href=\"https:\/\/my.clevelandclinic.org\/health\/symptoms\/21660-inflammation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">inflammation<\/a>\u00a0in the body, and when blood forms lots of\u00a0<a class=\"rm-stats-tracked\" href=\"https:\/\/medlineplus.gov\/bloodclots.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">clots<\/a>, this can often have an impact on the brain,\u201d added Cheke, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge<strong>.\u00a0<\/strong>\u201c[And] our main finding was that people with ongoing symptoms \u2014 with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/t-long-covid\">long COVID<\/a> \u2014 had measurable reductions in memory ability.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>About 10% to 25% of all COVID patients are believed to be at risk for developing long COVID, the research team noted.<\/p>\n<p>In the March 17 issue of the\u00a0<em><a class=\"rm-stats-tracked\" href=\"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/fnagi.2022.804922\/full\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience<\/a><\/em>, Cheke and her colleagues discuss the\u00a0<a class=\"rm-stats-tracked\" href=\"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/fnagi.2022.804937\/full\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">work<\/a>\u00a0they did following patients who were infected with the original Alpha variant of the coronavirus.<\/p>\n<p>All the long COVID participants first enrolled in the study sometime between October 2020 and March 2021, while Alpha was still circulating. (None of the patients had been infected with later coronavirus strains Delta or Omicron.)<\/p>\n<p>Most had been infected at least a half year prior to enrollment, and only a handful had been so sick at the time of infection that they needed to be hospitalized.<\/p>\n<p>Patient symptoms were tracked for about a year and a half, on average.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, the team found that 78% reported difficulty concentrating, while 69% reported experiencing \u201c<a class=\"rm-stats-tracked\" href=\"https:\/\/www.health.harvard.edu\/blog\/what-is-covid-19-brain-fog-and-how-can-you-clear-it-2021030822076\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">brain fog<\/a>.\u201d About 68% indicated suffering from routine forgetfulness. Meanwhile, 60% said they struggled to identify words when speaking.<\/p>\n<p>When compared with men and women who had never had COVID, long COVID health issues translated into notably lower scores on thinking tests gauging the ability to recall words, remember images and\/or make decisions.<\/p>\n<p>The worse a long COVID patient\u2019s symptoms, the worse he or she performed on such tests, the research found.<\/p>\n<p>The team also observed that long COVID patients who had initially struggled with certain symptoms when first infected were more likely to develop chronic thinking problems. Those initial symptoms included fatigue, dizziness and\/or headaches.<\/p>\n<p>Lyn Curtis, a member of Cheke\u2019s team, experienced this firsthand as a patient.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHaving been fit and active all my life, after catching COVID-19 during the first wave, my son\u2014then 13\u2014and I didn\u2019t seem to recover,\u201d she said in a Cambridge news release. \u201cWe were left with debilitating fatigue and a confusing mix of strange and life-changing symptoms. I was also left with significant neurological symptoms, including speech and language issues, which had a huge impact on my life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Given that such symptoms \u201cimpacts the most on my quality of life and ability to work,\u201d Curtis thinks that studies such as these are \u201cessential,\u201d to get a better handle on what\u2019s actually going on and develop effective treatments.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Colin Franz is a physician-scientist at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago. He agreed that the research is still murky when it comes to pinpointing the cause of these thinking problems.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t know for sure what causes these issues with brain function and health from long COVID,\u201d said Franz, who wasn\u2019t involved with the studies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe reasons may vary from person to person,\u201d he said. \u201cFor example, one person may have poor sleep and breathing difficulties that lead to\u00a0<a class=\"rm-stats-tracked\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hopkinsmedicine.org\/health\/conditions-and-diseases\/chronic-fatigue-syndrome\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">chronic fatigue<\/a>\u00a0and indirectly affect brain health and function. In other people, there may be persistent levels of inflammation in the body.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Still, Franz said long COVID patients should \u201cstay hopeful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook for a comprehensive post-COVID clinic in your community, which can connect you with a multitude of clinicians who can help address all lingering impairments of COVID in a more holistic fashion,\u201d he advised. \u201cFor example, some people need to see a cardiologist or pulmonologist for breathing treatments, others a rheumatologist or physiatrist for painful joints.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMost of our patients improve with a structured approach, yet the improvements are gradual,\u201d Franz said. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to struggle through this by yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>More information<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s more on long COVID at\u00a0<a class=\"rm-stats-tracked\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/coronavirus\/2019-ncov\/long-term-effects\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>SOURCES: Lucy Cheke, PhD, associate professor, Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England; Colin K. Franz MD, PhD, physician-scientist, Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, Chicago; University of Cambridge, news release, March 17, 2022;\u00a0<em>Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience,\u00a0<\/em>March 17, 2022.<\/p>\n<p><em>Alan Mozes has been a medical journalist for 20 years, having previously reported for Reuters Health and Gannett News. He is also an accomplished photographer, whose work has been featured in Vanity Fair, Architectural Digest, Canon Europe, and Business Insider. A New Yorker born and bred, he\u2019s a graduate of McGill University in Montreal, Canada.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This story was originally published on the HealthDay <a href=\"https:\/\/consumer.healthday.com\/3-17-memory-issues-plague-long-covid-patients-2656954380.html\">site<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Memory and concentration problems haunt 7 in 10 patients with\u00a0long COVID, a pair of new studies indicate. The findings suggest that COVID-19 has a notable impact on brain health, even<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":489,"featured_media":1896228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1403885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/489"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1403885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1896228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1403885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1403885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1403885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}