According to a study by the Institut Pasteur, relayed in the scientific journal Nature Communications on July 22, COVVI-19 would be housed for several weeks in the brain and would be linked, for certain patients, to the development of neurological disorders such as anxiety or depression.
Five years after its appearance, the COVVI-19 continues to mobilize entire teams of scientists, who seek to determine its long-term consequences. Researchers from the Pasteur Institute have looked into the effects of the brain virus and noticed by conducting research on infected hamsters that part of the patients developed neurological disorders. According to the first results of this study, relayed by the journal Nature Communications, the COVVI-19 would house “at the level of the central nervous system” and persist “up to 80 days after the acute phase of the infection”.
According to Anthony Coleon, doctoral student in the Lyssavirus unit, epidemiology and neuropathology at the Institut Pasteur, COVVI-19 “seems to have an impact on the production of dopamine,” he said in a statement. Dopamine is “a neurotransmitter involved in the regulation of emotions and memory”.
A different impact on the symptoms developed by sex
The presence of the virus in the brain of sick subjects, 80 days after infection, “is linked to signs of depression, memory disorders and anxiety,” said the Pasteur Institute in its press release, specifying that divergences of “behavioral symptoms” had also been noted according to the sex of the animal studied.
If this research should still be deepened “in order to understand how the infection induces the loss of function of dopamine neurons”, they once again link the covid-19 to our brain. Recently, a scientific study, also published in the journal Nature Communications, concluded that COVVI-19 had had an impact on our neurological health, accelerating the aging of our brains, and not only for patients. Stress, isolation, lack of physical and cognitive activity may indeed have played a role.
Posted on July 30 at 1:32 p.m., Maeliss Innocenti, 6medias