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, shedding light on “brain fog,” a common complaint among the many survivors experiencing ‘long Covid’—lingering coronavirus symptoms months after infection. A series of cognitive tests revealed high levels of cognitive impairment among 740 Covid-19 patients months after they had been diagnosed with Covid-19 , according to the peer reviewed study, affecting up to one in four patients in some instances.
Compared to outpatients, impairments were more frequent among patients who were admitted for inpatient hospital care or treated in the emergency department, respectively 3 and 1.8 times more likely to show impaired language, 2.3 and 1.7 times more likely to have impaired memory encoding and 2.2 and 1.5 times more likely to have impaired memory retrieval.
While it’s known that older adults are more susceptible to cognitive impairment following severe illness, the researchers said the study’s relatively young cohort suggests the impairment is linked to Covid-19 specifically, a finding in line with research on other viruses like flu and early reports from Covid-19 patients.