Thursday, December 4 | 2:00 p.m.-2:10 p.m. | R6-SSNR15-4 | Room S406B
The COVID pandemic may appear to be behind us, but for many who contracted the illness, its effects continue, according to research to be presented Thursday afternoon.
A team led by Yangsean Choi, MD, PhD, of Seoul St. Mary's Hospital in South Korea identified "structural and molecular brain changes specific to cognitively impaired PASC [postacute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection] patients."
The group's findings address a knowledge gap regarding the extent of brain alterations and their association with neurodegenerative processes in individuals with PASC.
Choi and colleagues conducted a study that assessed brain MRI results in this population, categorizing study participants -- all of whom had experienced mild COVID one year prior to the start of the research -- into the following three groups:
- Cog-PASC: PASC with cognitive impairment
- Other-PASC: PASC without cognitive impairment
- NS-PASC: No significant PASC symptoms
All patients underwent multimodal brain MR imaging. The team tracked MRI biomarkers such as cortical thickness and choroid plexus volumes from 3D T1-weighted images, diffusion tensor imaging along the perivascular spaces, and quantitative susceptibility mapping.
Overall, the investigators reported that Cog-PASC patients were older than those in the NS-PASC and Other-PASC groups (p < 0.001), and had worse cognitive performance (Montreal Cognitive Assessment [MoCA] score: 24 for Cog-PASC patients versus 28 in both other groups; p < 0.001).
"These results suggest that individuals with Cog-PASC, even after mild COVID-19 infection, exhibit distinct neurodegenerative changes," the researchers concluded.
