COVID-19 Survivors May Experience These Two Newly Discovered Side Effects

Maria Loreto

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In partnership with The Fresh Toast

A recent study found a pair of side effects that are associated with long-haul COVID-19.

There are a couple of recurring side effects that are now being associated with post-COVID-19 symptoms (also known as “long COVID”). According to a new study, memory loss and cognitive dysfunction are common symptoms linked with survivors of the virus.

The study, published in JAMA Network Open, was conducted on patients interned in Mount Sinai Health System. Researchers assessed the cognitive functions of 740 patients who had contracted COVID-19 and ranked their common symptoms. The top two symptoms were memory loss (24%) and memory recall (23%).

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Both of these symptoms are associated with what we informally call “brain fog.” Memory encoding allows you to carry out basic tasks, like remembering a location or a phone number. Memory recall refers to the steps you take to retrieve these memories. These results were achieved by asking people words and categories to recall, and showing subjects numbers on a screen, and later asking them to recall them.

The worse the disease, the more prevalent these symptoms were, with the study showing that hospitalized patients fared worse on these mental tasks than patients who were not hospitalized.

Brain fog is a term we often use to refer to any spacey feeling in our brain. It makes focusing, paying attention to your surroundings, tuning in on conversations, and more, much more difficult.

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According to a study published earlier this month, post-COVID-19 symptoms (also known as “long COVID”) affects a significant amount of people. The study found that of the 236 million people diagnosed with COVID-19, half of them experienced long COVID-19 symptoms, which can range from seriously limiting to mildly impairing.

Other long COVID-19 symptoms include fatigue, cough, joint pain, depression, anxiety, fever, and more.

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