Minor differences in neurologic symptoms seen between prevaccination infection and breakthrough infection
By Lori Solomon HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Jan. 15, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Vaccination prior to COVID-19 infection does not significantly affect neurological symptoms in patients with postacute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection, according to a study published online Jan. 7 in Brain Communications.
Shreya Mukherjee, from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and colleagues investigated whether vaccination prior to infection alters the subsequent neurologic postacute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (neuro-PASC). The analysis included data from 200 posthospitalization neuro-PASC (PNP) and 1,100 nonhospitalized neuro-PASC (NNP) patients evaluated at a neuro COVID-19 clinic between May 2020 and January 2023.
The researchers found that among PNP patients, 87 percent had a prevaccination infection, as did 70.7 percent of NPP patients. Breakthrough infections were associated with more frequent preexisting depression/anxiety. The three most common neurological symptoms for PNP patients were brain fog (86.5 percent), numbness/tingling (56.5 percent), and headache (56.5 percent) at an average of 10 months after symptom onset. PNP breakthrough infection was more frequently associated with anosmia. For NNP patients, the most common neurological symptoms were brain fog (83.9 percent), headache (70.9 percent), and dizziness (53.8 percent). For NNP patients with prevaccination infection, anosmia (56.6 versus 39.1 percent) and dysgeusia (53.3 versus 37.3 percent) occurred more frequently than for patients with breakthrough infection, whereas those with breakthrough infection more frequently reported dizziness (61.5 versus 50.6 percent). Impaired quality of life in cognitive, fatigue, sleep, anxiety, and depression domains were seen for all PASC patients, with no differences between prevaccination infection and breakthrough infection status.
“Taken together, these results indicate that, once PNP or NNP patients develop neuro-PASC, whether they contracted SARS-CoV-2 infection prior to, or after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination makes little difference in their clinical presentation, subjective alteration of quality of life or objective cognitive dysfunction,” the authors write.
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