LONDON (Reuters) – One in three COVID-19 survivors in a study of more than 230,000 patients, mostly Americans, were diagnosed with a brain or psychiatric disorder within six months, suggesting the pandemic could cause a wave of mental and neurological problems, scientists said on Tuesday.
The researchers who conducted the analysis said it was unclear how the virus related to psychiatric conditions such as anxiety and depression, but that they were the most common diagnoses among the 14 disorders they examined.
Post-COVID cases of stroke, dementia, and other neurological disorders were rarer, the researchers said, but were still significant, especially in those who had severe COVID-19.
“Our results indicate that brain disease and psychiatric disorders are more common after COVID-19 than after the flu or other respiratory infections,” said Max Taquet, a psychiatrist at Oxford University in Britain. co-direct the work.
The study could not determine the biological or psychological mechanisms involved, he said, but urgent research is needed to identify them “in order to prevent or treat them.”
Health experts are increasingly concerned about the evidence of increased risks of brain and mental health disorders among COVID-19 survivors. A previous study by the same researchers found last year that 20% of COVID-19 survivors were diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder within three months.
The new findings, published in the journal Lancet Psychiatry, looked at the health records of 236,379 COVID-19 patients, mostly from the United States, and found that 34% had been diagnosed with neurological or psychiatric illness within six months.
The disorders were significantly more common in patients with COVID-19 than in comparison groups of people who recovered from the flu or other respiratory infections over the same period of time, the scientists said, suggesting that COVID-19 had a specific impact.
Anxiety, with 17%, and mood disorders, with 14%, were the most common and did not appear to be related to the mild or severe COVID-19 infection of the patient. .
However, among those who had been admitted to intensive care with severe COVID-19, 7% had a stroke within six months and nearly 2% had a diagnosis of dementia.
“While the individual risks for most disorders are small, the effect on the entire population can be substantial,” said Paul Harrison, an Oxford psychiatry professor who led the work.
Report by Kate Kelland, edited by Emelia Sithole-Matarise