"Brain fog" is one of the most troubling, though non-lethal symptoms produced in many COVID patients.

quote:

Clinically known as dysexecutive syndrome, the condition is a COVID-19-kindled delirium, initially experienced by patients while sick as a state of confusion and impaired awareness. It then often stays on after recovery to torment as persistent cognitive sluggishness.

The link describing this study was published in JAMA Neurology.

Kind of technical, but I gather that they are hypothesizing that some large out-of-place" (their term) bone marrow-originating cells migrate to the brain, where they block/impede capillaries . Reduced blood flow in the cerebral cortex, of course, reduces cognitive function.

They are for now guessing that this hypothesized mechanism results from some kind of "chemical signaling" from damaged lung tissue.

They've found nuclei from these large cells (many times larger than most marrow cells) in five of fifteen brains autopsied from COVID patients . In the control group of non-COVID brains (number?), none were found. They call these abnormal cells megakaryocytes.

(It would have been very interesting if they had also obtained background on these particular COVID patients - whether in life they had evinced that infamous "brain fog. For that matter, whether any of the COVID patients who did NOT have the megakaryocytes had shown signs of that cognitive impairment.)

At any rate, there are increasingly rhymes and reasons being found for the way COVID seems to attack almost ALL the organs of the body (perhaps not "almost", the more they study).

origin of COVID "brain fog"?

Thank you, Amanda.

I sent this to my geeky researcher friend. She was very interested because one of the side effects she had the day after her second Moderna shot was brain fog. As she put it, she could not figure out how to tie her shoes. Literally. She attributed it to a mechanism basically the same as the article described.

Her fog lasted a day and ended, presumably after her immune system realized there was no actual virus to fight. She’s grateful to have gotten the vaccine so she could avoid the kind of ongoing fog that people get if they actually have the virus.

Thanks for posting it!