- A study indicates that approximately one-third of COVID-19 survivors in the United States will be diagnosed with a neurological or mental health condition by 2020 within six months of their COVID-19 diagnoses.
- Anxiety and mood disorders were the most common diagnoses.
- Neurological conditions, such as stroke and dementia, were less common but were more common in people with severe COVID-19.
- The general effect of these disorders, many of which are chronic, can be significant for health and social care systems due to the scale of the pandemic.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been concern that survivors are at increased risk for neurological and mental health conditions.
Initially, these concerns were based
There was also early evidence that the disease can affect the central nervous system.
In November 2020, a
The same researchers now used the health records of more than 236,000 patients in the U.S. to estimate the risks of neurological and psychiatric conditions in the six months following a COVID-19 diagnosis.
Participants received COVID-19 diagnoses between January 20 and December 13, 2020.
The researchers estimate that the overall incidence of neurological or mental health diagnoses was 34%.
In the six months following their COVID-19 diagnoses, 13% of participants received their first diagnosis of a neurological or psychiatric condition.
The most common diagnoses were anxiety disorders, in 17% of all participants, mood disorders, in 14%, drug abuse disorders, in 7% and insomnia, in 5%.
The incidence of neurological disorders was lower – 2.1% of all participants had an ischemic stroke, 0.7% had dementia and 0.6% had a brain haemorrhage.
This new study was published in
Those who experience worse COVID-19 are at greater risk for mental health and neurological diagnoses.
Participants who experienced delirium, which is suddenly a state of confusion, or encephalopathy, which is brain disease or damage, had the highest risk over the next 6 months, 62%.
Prof. Paul Harrison, the senior author of the study, says the results confirm the high percentages of mental health diagnosis after COVID-19.
He stressed that although the incidence of neurological disorders was much lower than that of mental health conditions, this risk was still significant, especially among people with severe COVID-19.
Prof. Harrison believes that resources must be provided to deal with the extra demands on primary and secondary services.
‘Although the individual risks for most disorders are small, the impact on the whole population for health and social care systems can be significant due to the scale of the pandemic […] many of these conditions are chronic, ”he adds.
The researchers analyzed data from the health records of 236,379 people with COVID-19 in the TriNetX database.
They compared the results for this group with those of 105,579 people with flu and 236,038 people with any respiratory infection diagnosed between January and December 2020. The latter two groups acted as controls.
Taking into account underlying health risks, the team linked the people in each group in terms of characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity, and other ongoing health conditions.
The chance of having a diagnosis of a neurological or mental health condition was 44% higher after COVID-19 than after flu. This chance was 16% higher after COVID-19 than after another airway infection.
Meanwhile, there was no clear evidence of more diagnoses of Parkinsonism or Guillain-Barré syndrome after COVID-19 than after flu or other respiratory infections.
“We now need to see what happens for more than 6 months,” says Dr. Maxime Taquet, lead author of the research article.
“The study cannot reveal the mechanisms involved, but indicates the need for urgent research to identify them, with the aim of preventing or treating them,” he adds.
Dr Musa Sami, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Nottingham, UK, who was not involved in the research, agrees that the causes of the increased risk of neurological and mental health conditions were unclear.
He told the Science Media Center in London:
“What we do not fully understand at the moment is the mechanism by which COVID-19 has this effect: psychological stress, longer hospital stays and the characteristics of the disease may play a role.”
The authors of the current research acknowledge that studies such as theirs, which are based on electronic health records, have inherent weaknesses.
For example, the records may be incomplete, the diagnoses were not validated and there was insufficient information about participants’ lifestyle and socio-economic status.
In addition, the authors note that the flu and other airway infections are seasonal, so most occurred earlier in 2020 than the COVID-19 infections.
This may have led to an underestimation of the additional risks, as most COVID-19 infections occurred when access to regular health services was restricted by the pandemic.
In addition, some people in the control groups may have had undiagnosed COVID-19, which would also lead to an underestimation of the additional risks.
For live updates on the latest developments regarding the new coronavirus and COVID-19, click here.