Cognitive impairment after recovery from COVID-19: Frequency, profile, and relationships with clinical and laboratory indices.
Eur Neuropsychopharmacol
; 79: 22-31, 2024 Feb.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38065006
ABSTRACT
Cognitive impairment (CI) is regarded as a remarkable burden in COVID-19 survivors. Its prevalence and profile, and relationships with the disease clinical and laboratory indices, remain unclear. The present study investigated, in a large sample of patients recovered from COVID-19, the frequency of CI with both a face-to-face screening tool and comprehensive test battery (MCCB). The study also evaluated the profile of CI and its relationships with COVID-19 clinical and laboratory indices and with psychopathological features. Out of 1344 subjects assessed for eligibility, 736 completed the screening phase 11 months after the COVID-19 infection; 402 participated in the baseline phase and completed an in depth cognitive, clinical and laboratory assessment about one month later. More than one third of the screened subjects presented a CI (COG+); it was associated to age, education, male gender, COVID-19 severity, and presence of anosmia, dyspnea at rest and exertional dyspnea during the acute phase. COG+ subjects showed a higher severity of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic distress, and worse global functioning, than subjects without CI. The MCCB showed that 45% of the subjects had a CI involving attention, working memory, verbal learning, visual learning, and reasoning and problem solving. Finally, neurocognitive functioning was inversely correlated with LDH blood levels, a potential biomarker of disease severity. According to our findings, cognitive functioning should be routinely and periodically assessed in COVID-19 patients, especially in older subjects, who experienced more severe COVID-19 symptoms. In case of persisting dysfunctions cognitive training programs should be considered as treatment strategies.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Cognition Disorders
/
Cognitive Dysfunction
/
COVID-19
Limits:
Aged
/
Humans
/
Male
Language:
En
Journal:
Eur Neuropsychopharmacol
Journal subject:
PSICOFARMACOLOGIA
Year:
2024
Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Italy