United Kingdom: A new study has found that brain fog and fatigue often experienced by people with ‘long COVID’ might be linked to blood clots. Long COVID refers to symptoms that persist for weeks to years after a COVID-19 infection.
In a United Kingdom study conducted on 1,837 people admitted to hospitals because of COVID-19, researchers noted that two blood proteins indicate to clots as one cause. It is thought that 16 percent of such patients have had trouble thinking, concentrating, or remembering for at least six months. Long-term COVID can also develop after milder infections.
However, the research team, from the universities of Oxford and Leicester, stresses that their findings are relevant only to patients admitted to hospitals. The researchers noted that they are “the first piece of the jigsaw,” and further research is needed before they can propose or test any potential treatments.
“Identifying predictors and possible mechanisms was “a key step” in understanding post-Covid brain fog,” study author Prof. Paul Harrison, from the University of Oxford, commented.
M. Chris Brightling, Leicester’s professor of respiratory medicine, remarked that “it is a combination of someone’s health before, the acute event itself, and what happens afterwards that lead on to physical and mental health consequences.”
The Post-hospitalisation Covid-19 study (PHosp-Covid), in Nature Medicine, blames higher levels of the protein fibrinogen and protein fragment D-dimer for brain fog.
Study author Dr. Max Taquet, from Oxford, stated that “both fibrinogen and D-dimer are involved in blood clotting, and so the results support the hypothesis that blood clots are a cause of post-Covid cognitive problems. Fibrinogen may be directly acting on the brain and its blood vessels, whereas D-dimer often reflects blood clots in the lungs, and the problems in the brain might be due to a lack of oxygen.”
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