See the shocking study pictures of how Covid was found to damage brains

Covid can cause “ongoing brain damage” leading to cognitive decline equivalent to 20 years of ageing, new research with huge implications has just revealed.

Startling new research suggests severe Covid infections can age a person’s brain by as much as 20 years, leading Victorian health experts to warn education and work performance could be badly affected into the future.

An eye-opening British study currently under review in the respected medical journal Nature Portfolio reveals “the magnitude of cognitive deficits … increased with severity of illness during the acute phase, with deficits among individuals requiring respiratory support or mechanical ventilation similar in magnitude to ageing 20 years from 50 to 70 years”.

International infectious diseases expert Dr Greta Wood — who is a member of the World Health Organisation, clinical fellow with Britain’s National Institute for Health and Care Research and leads the Global Brain Health Clinical Exchange — said the new research showed “at one year, those who had required hospitalisation, cognitive deficits were global and equivalent in magnitude to 20 years ageing”.

Covid infection has now been linked to brain ageing of up to 20 years.

“We report one year cognitive, serum biomarker and neuoimaging findings in 351 patients,” Dr Wood tweeted, adding that as the research paper was in pre-print and not yet peer reviewed, the findings were provisional and conclusions could change.

“Cognitive deficits were associated with elevated brain injury biomarkers and reduced grey matter volume,” Dr Wood said.

“The half-lives of the brain injury markers meant that this is objective evidence of ongoing brain injury one year after Covid-19. Deficits were correlated with symptoms of depression and the anterior cingulate cortex volume, which has functional roles in connecting, cognition, attention and emotion.”

The findings — shared widely on Thursday night within global science networks — caused high-profile Australian doctor and politician Professor Kerryn Phelps to tweet: “Value your brain? Don’t keep getting infected with Covid-19.”

Head of Melbourne’s Burnet Institute Professor Brendan Crabb tweeted: “Important paper, albeit still under review. Caveats listed but conclusions on prolonged cognitive decline are powerful. With these sort of effects you expect performance at school, work, driving and the like to be worse than it otherwise would be in large numbers of people.”