The new coronavirus might not be having major direct effects on the brain despite neurological issues that have been widely reported, a new paper suggests. Researchers examined brains of 43 COVID-19 patients who died in intensive care units, nursing homes, regular hospital wards, or at home. They found coronavirus proteins in the brain stem, but little involvement of the frontal lobe. They also saw increases in astrocytes, signaling destruction of nearby neurons. Because critical illness itself can contribute to this finding, it is not clear that COVID-19 is the direct cause. The presence of the virus was not associated with the severity of brain tissue changes, researchers said. All of the brains showed signs of neuroimmune activation, however. Patients' neurological symptoms might be due to the body's immune response, rather than to direct central nervous system damage from the virus, the authors speculate in The Lancet Neurology. "We have started to define the immune reaction to SARS-CoV-2 virus in the brain," coauthor Markus Glatzel of University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in German told Reuters. "We think that the neuroimmune reaction may be a factor explaining some of the neurological symptoms seen in COVID-19 patients." —Reuters Staff Source
