According to new research released Friday, your ever-congested sinuses can be a harbinger of more problems on the road. The small study found evidence of a link between chronic breast inflammation and altered brain activity, possibly harmful. The findings do not necessarily show that the two things are directly connected, but they do highlight the need for further study.
He sinuses they are the empty spaces around our nasal cavity and are believed to primarily keep the nose moist and protected by providing mucus. They can occasionally become inflamed for short periods of time through infections, but some people are unlucky enough to develop chronic sinus inflammation or chronic rhinosinusitis.
Of course, no one is feeling the most with a lock nas, ithere have been suggestions in recent years about a link between chronic breast inflammation and decreased cognition. Studies have found, for example, that patients do worse in tests of his cognitionfunction that similar control subjects and that their performance improvement after starting treatment for his illness. And the patients themselves have described feeling a sense of “brain fog”In addition to the other physical symptoms, which may include nasal congestionreduced ions, taste, and smell and facial pain or discomfort.
This new study, published Friday at JAMA Otolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery, seems to be one of the first to try to find the physical foundations of this link. The researchers examined data from the Human Connectome Project, a USA government-sponsored study of the human brain. The project is an attempt to map and understand the circuits of the brain and how these connections really help the functioning of the body. It is based primarily on neuroimaging data collected by more than 1,000 healthy and healthy adult volunteers, who also received a zip battery.nitests.
From this project, the researchers examined a group of 22 people who appeared to have chronic sinus inflammation and compared them with a similar group of people without inflammation. Compared to the control group, people with sinus inflammation appeared to have decreased functional connectivity to key brain areas for cognition: the frontoparietal network, which helps us stay focused and solve problems, and the relevance network. , which helps us distinguish stimulates and plays a role in our ability to communicate and other social behaviors. They also found greater connectivity to the default mode network, which is more active when we’re at rest and doesn’t focus on any particular task, like when we dream awake.
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It is important to note that people with chronic sinus inflammation did not perform worse on average in their cognitive tests than the control group. But the findings suggest that something may be going on in the brain that is noticeably different from those that do not have inflammation and in ways that may explain the symptoms of brain fog that patients may experience. Because the people in this study were young, it is also possible that more noticeable changes in their cognition related to inflammation have not yet appeared, changes that could arise if their inflammation was not treated.
However, the authors are careful to present their research as a proof of concept, an attempt to show that this link needs to be further studied. This additional research will not only confirm that breast inflammation can damage our brain, but also offer opportunities to find more treatments for the common disease. Chronic sinus inflammation is believed to affect so many as one in 10 Americans. Talthough there are treatments such as antibiotics or surgery, they are often repeated and it can take years for patients to find lasting relief.
“The next step would be to study people who have been clinically diagnosed with chronic sinusitis. It may involve scanning patients ’brains, providing a typical treatment for breast disease with medication or surgery, and then re-scanning it later to see if their brain activity had changed. Or we could look for inflammatory molecules or markers in patients ’blood streams,” said lead author Arie Jafari, surgeon and assistant professor of otolaryngology — head and neck surgery at the University of Washington School of Medicine. statement of the university.
For now, the team hopes its findings will at least make doctors more aware that this chronic disease can affect their patients in depth. ways.
“Our care should not be limited to relieving the most obvious physical symptoms, but the entire burden of the patient’s illness,” Jafari said.