Cognitive impairment from long COVID equivalent to aging 20 years, study finds – CTV
May 8, 2022
A new study says that cognitive impairment due to long COVID is the equivalent of aging 20 years or losing 10 IQ points.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London published their findings in the journal eClinicalMedicine last week. They looked at data from 46 individuals who received care at a hospital for COVID-19 between March and July 2020 and compared them to a matched control group.
Six months after their stay in hospital, the researchers invited the patients and the control group to undergo a computerized test to measure their memory, attention and reasoning. The researchers found that compared to the control group, those who had been hospitalized with COVID-19 were less accurate and displayed slower response times in the test.
“Cognitive impairment is common to a wide range of neurological disorders, including dementia, and even routine ageing, but the patterns we saw – the cognitive ‘fingerprint’ of COVID-19 – was distinct from all of these,” senior author Dr. David Menon of the University of Cambridge said in a news release published last Tuesday.
