A new study published in Nature reveals that even a mild case of COVID-19 can prematurely age the brain, resulting in a loss in grey matter, and lead to other cerebral abnormalities.
“We were quite surprised to see clear differences in the brain even with mild infection,” lead author Gwenaëlle Douaud, an associate professor of neurosciences at the University of Oxford, told CNN in an email.
Douaud and her colleagues evaluated brain imaging from 401 people who had COVID-19 between March 2020 and April 2021, both before infection and an average of 4.5 months after infection. They compared the results with brain imaging of 384 uninfected people similar in age, socioeconomics, and risk factors such as blood pressure and obesity. Of the 401 infected people, 15 had been hospitalized.
Read the full article on CNN.
