34% Of COVID-19 Survivors Suffer 'Brain Diseases And Psychiatric Disorders': Study

At least a third of people who survived a COVID-19 infection now suffer brain diseases or psychiatric disorders, a group of researchers reported Tuesday.

A study published Tuesday in The Lancet Psychiatry showed 34% of coronavirus survivors were diagnosed with mental health or neurological conditions within six months of being infected.

Some of the most common diagnoses includes anxiety, found in 17% of COVID-19 survivors, and mood disorders, found in 14% of patients.

The neurological and psychological diagnoses occured in patients who were hospitalized due to severe COVID-19 and people who received treatment in an outpatient setting. However, the effects were more severe for survivors who had been hospitalized.

"That rate increased progressively as the severity of the Covid-19 illness increased. If we look at patients who were hospitalized that rate increased to 39%," Maxime Taquet, an academic clinical fellow in psychiatry at the University of Oxford and a co-author of the study, said.

"Our results indicate that brain diseases and psychiatric disorders are more common after Covid-19 than after flu or other respiratory infections, even when patients are matched for other risk factors. We now need to see what happens beyond six months," she added.

The researchers noted that the coronavirus did not necessarily increase the risk for the full spectrum of neurological illnesses.

"Two important negative findings were related to parkinsonism and Guillain-Barré syndrome," Taquet explained. "Both of those conditions are neurological conditions that we know are sometimes associated with viral infection. We did not find that they were more common after Covid-19 and after the other respiratory tract infections that we looked at."

The study was the largest of its kind, involving the health records of more than 236,000 coronavirus patients, most of whom were in the U.S.

Smaller studies have revealed the same results. In February, a study in Rome found that at least 30% of the 381 COVID-19 patients observed experienced post-traumatic stress disorder after recovering from the infection. Those who developed PTSD also were more likely to be women or people who previously had a psychiatric disorder.

In December 2020, a study published in the online journal Neurology: Clinical Practice showed the coronavirus infection, even moderate cases, could lead to stroke, seizures and movement disorders.