Deficits increased with severity of ongoing self-reported symptoms; severity of initial illness did not influence later cognitive performance<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n
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TUESDAY, March 29, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Individuals with “long COVID” have memory deficits, with increased deficits seen in association with the severity of ongoing self-reported symptoms, according to research published online March 17 in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience<\/em>.<\/p>\n Panyuan Guo, from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and colleagues reviewed results from the mixed cross-sectional\/longitudinal study, the COVID and Cognition Study, to examine how factors associated with COVID-19 infection may impact performance on cognitive tests. Data were included for 181 participants who had experienced COVID-19 infection (74 percent of whom self-identified as experiencing long-COVID) and 185 who had not. Participants were assessed on a range of cognitive tasks intended to cover aspects of memory, language, and executive functions.<\/p>\n The researchers observed a consistent pattern of memory deficits among those who had experienced COVID-19 infection; specifically, increased reaction time was seen when performing a verbal memory task. Deficits increased with the severity of ongoing self-reported symptoms, specifically in verbal memory. Cognitive performance was predicted by fatigue\/mixed symptoms during the initial illness and ongoing neurological symptoms; the reported severity of initial illness did not influence later performance on cognitive tasks.<\/p>\n “Long COVID has received very little attention politically or medically. It urgently needs to be taken more seriously, and cognitive issues are an important part of this,” a coauthor said in a statement. “When politicians talk about ‘Living with COVID’ — that is, unmitigated infection, this is something they ignore. The impact on the working population could be huge.”<\/p>\n