Infection by the Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 not only with fever, cough and respiratory symptoms, but also neurological symptoms cause. This is the result of a study of Chinese scientists, with the patients in Wuhan, the epicenter of the pandemic, the Virus spread throughout the world.
As the doctors in the journal "JAMA Neurology" reports showed a good third of the studied 214 patients, there is evidence that the Virus had damaged the nervous system. Among the most common symptoms of dizziness and headaches, as well as Smell and taste disorders.
In the past few days, had been heaped already reports that Corona patients lost at least temporarily their sense of taste and smell. These symptoms indicate that the brain was involved, said the infection Loge Bernd Salzberger from the University hospital Regensburg. "There is, so far, only very few studies on the brain of Corona patients. Since we are still in the dark."
Dizziness, Headache, Stroke
The current study in Wuhan, based only on the evaluation of the corresponding patient records, laboratory findings, and radiological studies for the 214 study participants with a proven Covid-19-disease. As the Team reported to the neurologist Ling Mao, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, showed that 78 (36.4%) of them neurological manifestations, which were all the more serious, the more serious is the Covid-19-disease was total.
The most common medical dizziness (36 patients, 16.8%) and headache (28 patients, 13.1%), was observed. In addition, it came in twelve patients (5.6 percent), taste disturbances, and in eleven patients (5.1%) disturbances of the sense of smell. Six patients (2.8%) suffered a stroke.
Specific and non-specific symptoms
In an independent Editorial on the study, the neurologist Samuel Pleasure, Ari Green and Andrew Josephson of the University of California, parts of these manifestations in specific symptoms (loss of smell or sense of taste, Muscle weakness, and stroke, a seizure) and non-specific symptoms (headache, disorders of consciousness, dizziness, and seizures). Especially in the case of the non-specific symptoms remain unclear, whether this expression be the disease itself or as part of a systemic inflammatory response in patients who were already very sick. This question would have to investigate in future studies.
"It is important that the authors found that the patients studied with some of the most common specific symptoms including smell or taste disorders, and muscle diseases tended to haben" these symptoms the beginning of their clinical course to;, explain the three neurologists. This differs significantly from the neurological manifestations in Sars infections in 2002/2003, which were also caused by a Coronavirus.
Sars and Mers: here, Too, there was damage to the nervous system
In fact, a to a Coronavirus declining disease of Sars and also Mers – also known that they can cause damage to the nervous system. For both infections has been proved experimentally that the Virus can enter through the olfactory nerves in the nasal cavity to the brain.
In the case of Covid-19 will now be discussed, whether, for example, a respiratory arrest is also the result of neuro might be logical damage – for example, in the case of inflammation of the brain stem, where the control for the cardiovascular System and the respiratory tract sits. From a neurological point of view, it is important to clarify how many of the severe courses of the disease triggered by the involvement of the Central nervous system, noted Peter Berlit, Secretary-General of the German society for neurology.
In view of the current Chinese study, the physicians Pleasure, Green and Josephson see in your Editorial " neurologists in the future;at the forefront of the Pandemie". The authors of the study consider it especially important that Physicians consider in patients with relevant neurological symptoms, a Covid-19-infection into account, "to avoid a delayed diagnosis or misdiagnosis and to verhindern" a further Transfer;.
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