A team of researchers from National Institutes of Health, in an in-depth study of how Covid-19 affects a patient’s brain, have consistently spotted hallmarks of damage caused by thinning and leaky brain blood vessels in tissue samples. These damage hallmarks were spotted in patients who died shortly after contracting the disease.
In addition, they saw no signs of SARS-CoV-2 in the tissue samples, suggesting the damage was not caused by a direct viral attack on the brain. The results were published as correspondence in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“We found that the brains of patients who contract the infection from SARS-CoV-2 may be susceptible to microvascular blood vessel damage. Our results suggest that this may be caused by the body’s inflammatory response to the virus” said Avindra Nath, M.D., clinical director at the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the senior author of the study. “We hope these results…