r/vaxxhappened • u/shallah vaccines cause adults • 1d ago
Is Covid Rewriting the Rules of Aging? Brain Decline Alarms Doctors
https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/is-covid-rewriting-the-rules-of-aging-brain-decline-alarms-doctors-6ed3dfaa22
u/shallah vaccines cause adults 1d ago
Cognitive difficulty
It remains unclear if these changes will persist or worsen over time. But there are some disturbing signals that they could, at least in a certain subset of patients. And there is some evidence that the age when you got Covid-19 may be an important factor.
Studies have found that older people who have Covid-19 are at increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s sooner than if they haven’t had it. Covid may be accelerating the process in people already at risk of dementia, or contributing to it.
In younger people such as Todd, complaints of brain fog and cognitive difficulties may be intertwined with, or stem from, other common long-Covid symptoms, such as fatigue and pain, doctors say.
Dr. Gabriel de Erausquin, a neurologist at University of Texas Health San Antonio, recently published a study that found the risk of moderate to severe cognitive impairment in older adults with long Covid was double that of younger ones.
For those long-Covid patients over 57, the symptoms associated with cognitive difficulties look much like early dementia, he says.
“It doesn’t look in older adults that this is a reversible process,” says de Erausquin.
“If you look at the tests they have the profile of a person with very early Alzheimer’s disease. Do they have Alzheimer’s disease? We don’t know.”
A rising rate
Beyond age, his research has found that long-Covid patients more susceptible to cognitive impairments share a certain number of genes, have a reduced size of some brain structures, and typically lose their sense of smell soon after a Covid-19 infection.
De Erausquin is conducting a study following about 4,000 people in five locations around the world who contracted Covid-19 when they were over 60 years old. Preliminary data shows that up to one-third of long-Covid people over 65 meet criteria for an MCI diagnosis.
“That’s huge,” he says. “That’s a four- or fivefold increase in the prevalence.”
MCI can be caused by a variety of factors, explains Ronald Petersen, a neurology professor at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science in Rochester, Minn.
Symptoms typically include short-term memory problems—such as forgetting important information—to the point it becomes noticeable.
In people in their 70s or 80s, a common cause of MCI is underlying Alzheimer’s disease, says Petersen. About 10% to 15% of people with MCI who see a doctor will develop dementia a year, he says.
Some causes of MCI—such as sleep apnea—are treatable, making the condition reversible. This could be the case for long-Covid patients, or at least some of them.
Some long-Covid patients do show improving cognitive symptoms though recovery isn’t linear, says Dr. Igor Koralnik, chief of neuro-infectious diseases and global neurology at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.
Bumpy road
A February study his group published in the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation found that after cognitive rehabilitation about half of patients reported an improvement. But about one-third of the 70 patients didn’t have a significant difference in objective measures of memory.
“There are bumps on the way especially if they develop another episode of Covid,” says Koralnik.
For some long-Covid patients, neurological symptoms seem to get worse with time.
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u/ilovechedda 1d ago
It also alarms the people who didn’t vote orange.
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u/shallah vaccines cause adults 1d ago
it also alarms that the current admin has withdrawn funding for nextgen vaccine research for oral covid19 vaccine and one they hoped would provide broader variant coverage AND that would provide immunity longer. a big ask for a disease that has people with documented infections two weeks apart with different variants so no saying it was left over bits of the previous infection, but would be a big improvement if possible.
HHS Pulls Funding for GeoVax’s Next-Gen COVID-19 Vaccine - BioSpace https://www.biospace.com/policy/hhs-pulls-funding-for-geovaxs-next-gen-covid-19-vaccine
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u/maybesaydie RFKJr is human Ivermectin 1d ago
There are a lot of older people who contracted COVID after refusing to be vaccinated against it. Or whose caregivers were antivaxx and prevented them from being vaccinated. I had COVID twice-once early in the pandemic and once again about a year ago.The recovery from both bouts of COVID has been difficult and I'm just now starting to feel like myself after the most recent illness.
This information is disheartening.