NIH researchers find brain damage in COVID-19 patients

USA: The researchers from US NIH found brain damage caused by thinning and leaky brain blood vessels in patients who died of COVID-19. In addition, they saw no signs of SARS-CoV-2 in tissue samples suggesting that the damage was not caused by a direct viral attack on the brain. The results of the study were published in the New England Journal of Medicine as a correspondence. 

The researchers found that the brains of patients who contract infection from SARS-CoV-2 may be susceptible to microvascular blood vessel damage. Although COVID-19 primarily manifests in the respiratory system, patients also experience neurological complications including headaches, delirium, cognitive dysfunction, dizziness, fatigue, and loss of the sense of smell. The reason for these complications isn't yet understood. Avindra Nath, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Bethesda, MD, and colleagues performed a postmortem high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (magnetic resonance microscopy) of the brains of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) (median age, 50 years) and histopathological examination that focused on microvascular changes in the olfactory bulb and brain stem.

Images were obtained from the brains of 13 patients with the use of an 11.7-Tesla scanner at a resolution of 25 μm for the olfactory bulb and at a resolution of 100 μm for the brain. Abnormalities were observed in brains of 10 patients. By means of multiplex fluorescence imaging (in 5 patients) and by means of chromogenic immunostaining (in 10 patients) the researchers then examined the brains of those patients that showed abnormality