Neurologist Explores Link Between COVID and “Brain Fog,” Memory Loss and Dementia

A new Rutgers study will examine how COVID-19 affects individuals in a number of cognitively related areas, including memory loss, ‘brain fog’ and dementia.

“Many people recovering from mild or moderate COVID-19 notice delayed thinking or memory loss, and this motivated us to use our experience studying cognitive problems associated with Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis and HIV to explore this phenomenon. to investigate,” said Dr. William T. Hu, associate professor and chief of cognitive neurology at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research.

dr. Hu, a leading cognitive neurologist and neuroscientist, is leading the characterization of cognitive impairment after mild to moderate COVID-19 at Rutgers.

“We’ve found that neuroinflammation is a common theme in many brain disorders, but not all neuroinflammation is created equal,” he noted. “We have developed a roadmap to study the protein and cellular changes involved in aggravating and alleviating symptoms of brain fog. In addition, we are using the latest RNA sequencing technology to understand how inflammatory cells ‘misbehave’ to treat memory/thinking disorders caused by prolonged COVID.

The team of dr. Hu will assess each person’s cognition, mood and sleep patterns to identify potential causes of brain fog and compare their brain MRI findings with biochemical features of neuroinflammation. They will analyze microglial cells — critical immune cells in the brain — from individuals who have had COVID-19 to determine whether those cells could be used to predict the persistence of post-COVID cognitive impairment (PCCI). This will allow researchers to generate new hypotheses about why these cells may be dysfunctional in COVID-19 and PCCI, what the shared inflammatory mechanisms are between PCCI and Alzheimer’s disease, and whether FDA-approved drugs can be reused to trigger it. of PCCI or improve its outcomes, Dr. Hu out.

dr. Hu recently received a $100,000 grant from TMCity, a private foundation based in Irvine, California, to help support the project, which will also examine whether COVID-19 infection is the clinical manifestation of Alzheimer’s disease in people aged 50 and over. years and older who would otherwise have no symptoms accelerate into their 60s and 70s.

“TMCity’s generous support will accelerate this effort in New Brunswick with the potential to apply the technique more widely to other organs affected by long-term COVID, such as the heart and lungs,” added Dr. Hu to it.

The study builds on the work that Dr. Hu and his team have been doing the growing Post-COVID Recovery Program led by Dr. Sabiha Hussain, an associate professor of medicine in the Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. The program, which is a joint initiative of the medical school and Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, typically sees 15-17 people in weekly Monday clinics and offers a range of services, including behavioral health; cardiology; cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation; physical, speech and vocational rehabilitation; food services; lung/sleep therapy; and assistance with financial and social barriers related to recovery, in addition to the cognitive assessment and therapy Dr. Hu and his team provide additional assistance in cognitive rehabilitation from the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation.

About half of the individuals seen in the program have brain fog problems after their COVID attack. Of those who screened positively for neurocognitive problems, symptoms included memory loss, brain fog, new confusion, headache, numbness and multiple neurological symptoms, Dr. Hussain up.

“Neurocognitive consequences of post-COVID syndrome affect the daily lives of 62% of our patients,” she said.

“The vaccine may have helped somewhat with the brain fog, but what I see from a clinical standpoint is much more persistent short-term memory loss,” added Dr. Hussain, who also serves as director of the medical school for interventional bronchology. as its adult Cystic Fibrosis program.

She emphasized that the clinic is open to anyone who has had COVID, regardless of whether they have active symptoms. “What we find is that they may not have any respiratory symptoms or problems that would alert them to say, ‘Hey, I need to see a doctor,’ but they have other underlying symptoms such as a lot of fatigue, neurocognitive problems, and depression and anxiety that they don’t understand exactly why it happens. We screen for all those things, which helps with the overall quality of life,” explained Dr. Hussain out.

The post-COVID recovery program can be reached at 732-235-7840.