Top Stories

Coronavirus may cause serious damage to your brain, study says

PITTSBURGH — A new study shows that the coronavirus may cause serious damage to yet another organ: the brain.

According to the preliminary study conducted by bioRxiv, which was published in the New York Times last week, there had not previously been strong evidence that the virus could enter brain cells.

If you want to receive local news alerts, please download our WPXI News App. You can also follow WPXI on Facebook and Twitter.

The study said although COVID-19 is considered to be “primarily a respiratory disease, SARS-CoV-2 affects multiple organ systems including the central nervous system (CNS).”

Allegheny Health Network neurologist Dr. Thomas Scott said they didn’t know if brain cells could be infected like that.

“We knew that the brain was malfunctioning in a lot of patients with COVID for various reasons, but we didn’t know if the brain cells would actually be infected by the virus,” he said.

At times, patients experienced extreme symptoms of brain damage.

“There are going to be those rare patients and already some reported who ... what we call encephalitis with brain swelling, with the virus actually going into the brain and damaging the brain,” Scott said.

Other patients reported experiencing headaches, confusion and loss of taste and smell as symptoms of the virus.

Scott told Channel 11 patients have said it’s taken months to get over COVID-19 mentally, but they are working to find out how much is actually due to the virus infecting the brain and how much is permanent.

“I think it will take about a year before we can really dissect multiple good studies looking at the long-term effects of COVID on subtle cognitive issues,” said Scott.

The good news is Scott believes extreme cases of brain stress will be very rare.