Academic discipline. Psychology.

Research question. How does COVID-19 affect the brain?

Everything indicates that it is, but we still do not know how

Description of the much or how or in whom, and knowing that it is very
important to determine the therapy to apply to combat the
problema. neurological symptoms of the disease.

Benedict Michael, a neurologist at the University of Liverpool in England, and his team
have studied 125 COVID-19 patients who had neurological or psychiatric symptoms in
detail. The 62% had bleeding or damage to the brain's blood supply system, and 31% had
mental disturbances such as confusion or prolonged unconsciousness, often accompanied
by encephalitis, an inflammation of brain tissue. Some patients with mental disorders
developed disorientation, aggressiveness and psychotic hallucinatory states.

Other clinical studies have also shown that the most common neurological condition of the
disease is encephalitis, which can eventually "strip" many neurons in the brain and spinal
cord. That is, make them lose myelin, the fatty layer that surrounds their processes to
increase the speed at which they conduct their electrical impulses and communicate with
each other, as is also the case with multiple sclerosis. Other less frequent symptoms also
observed in patients with COVID-19 refer to damage to the peripheral nervous system, that
is, damage to the neurons that run through the body outside the brain and spinal cord.

But how does COVID-19 affect the brain? Experts debate two possibilities. One is that the
virus directly infects the brain and the other is that it affects it indirectly by intensely
stimulating the body's immune system. In the first case, the best therapy would be antivirals
such as remdesivir, and in the second, anti-inflammatories.

There is some experimental evidence, not yet strong enough, that the virus can directly
infect neurons. The virus has also been observed, albeit at low levels, in the brains of some
patients who died from COVID-19, and everything indicates that it is more difficult for the
brain to become infected than other organs of the body. It is speculated that the cause of
this difficult penetration is that in the brain there is less presence of ACE2, one of the
receptor proteins that help the virus to penetrate cells, but for now it is only a hypothesis.

In conclusion, although we still have a lot to know about COVID-19 and its mode of action,
particularly in the brain and the nervous system in general, what we know so far is enough
for us not to lower our guard against the pandemic.