COVID-19 is known to cause severe respiratory complications, however, new research finds that there may be even more serious complications arising from damage to the brain.
According to the findings, released in Seizure: European Journal of Epilepsy, there is now evidence that the coronavirus may cause even more drastic damage to the brain in as many as one-third of patients as previously thought.
To establish those findings, a team of researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Pittsburgh initiated electroencephalogram (EEG) tests during the epidemic.
The EEG tests are capable of assessing electrical activity in the brain, thus unveiling any abnormalities in particular areas of the brain.
The study led to 600 patients who were impacted with such brain abnormalities, showing slower electrical discharges in the frontal lobe.
“These findings tell us that we need to try EEG on a wider range of patients, as well as other types of brain imaging, such as MRI or CT scans, that will give us a closer look at the frontal lobe,” said Zulfi Haneef, co-researcher, in a press release.
“A lot of people think they will get the illness, get well and everything will go back to normal, but these findings tell us that there might be long-term issues, which is something we have suspected and now we are finding more evidence to back that up.”
