Long Covid brain fog may be due to a failure of your brain's defences against your blood

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-02-22 21:00

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Irish scientists say the brain fog some people experience as part of Long Covid is linked to disruptions in the blood-brain barrier, which usually protects your brain from anything potentially damaging in your blood. They used brain imaging techniques to look at the barrier in patients with Long Covid brain fog and analysed blood cells, revealing potential problems with normal blood clotting and a reduced immune response in the brain. That meant blood cells were sticking to brain cells and causing inflammation, which could lie behind the brain fog issues some Long Covid patients experience.

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Journal/
conference: Nature Neuroscience

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: St James’s Hospital, Ireland, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

Funder: This work was supported in part by a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) COVID-19 rapid response grant (no. 20/COV/0312) to M.C. and C.P.D. The laboratory is also supported by grants from the SFI (Eye-D-21/ SPP/3732) to M.C., the Irish Research Council and by a research grant from SFI under grant no. 21/RC/10294_P2 and cofunded under the European Regional Development fund by FutureNeuro industry partners to M.C. and C.P.D. The Campbell laboratory is also supported by a European Research Council grant, ‘Retina‐Rhythm’ (no. 864522).

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