After mild COVID, a young, healthy woman in the United States develops brain inflammation

Fresh York: A team of US physicians has described the first documented case of a young, healthy adult who developed brain inflammation after being infected with COVID-19, providing new insights into potential neurological implications of the infectious disease.

Although COVID-19 is typically treated as respiratory disease, patients frequently develop neurological difficulties such as headaches, anxiety, depression, and cognitive deficits, which can last for months after other symptoms have subsided.

Some studies have found vasculitis, or blood vessel damage and inflammation, in the brains and central nervous systems of COVID-19 individuals (CNS). The majority of occurrences of CNS vasculitis have been linked to older people with severe COVID-19.

A multidisciplinary team of clinicians from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine reported the case of a 26-year-old woman who was diagnosed with CoOVID-19 four days after an airline flight in mid-March 2020 in the journal Neurology: Neuroimmunology and Neuroinflammation.

Her symptoms were moderate at first, but two to three weeks later, she was having difficulties moving her left foot and had weakness on the left side of her body. She had no migraines, and her mental status or cognition had not changed.

However, magnetic resonance imaging indicated several lesions in the brain’s right frontoparietal area, which is important in motor control and feeling on the left side of the body. A biopsy indicated that the patient had CNS lymphocytic vasculitis, which is an inflammation or swelling of blood vessels in the brain and spine.

“This was the first verified instance of COVID-19 CNS vasculitis in a young healthy patient with apparently moderate COVID-19 infection,” said Jennifer Graves, a neurologist at UC San Diego Health.

“Her story teaches researchers and doctors that even in young patients and those with modest initial COVID-19 infections, these catastrophic potential brain consequences should be considered,” she noted.

After a series of corticosteroid-based therapies and the start of long-term immunosuppressive medicine, the woman’s lesions had significantly diminished and no new lesions had formed after six months. According to the researchers, she is still being treated with immunosuppressive drugs.

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