Coronavirus can affect brain: US study

WASHINGTON: A recent study has revealed that coronavirus is capable of replicating inside the brain, and its presence affects every brain cell. According to the study, symptoms of headache, confusion and delirium in COVID patients may be caused due to the coronavirus’ suspected ability to enter brain cells, thereby affecting neurological systems in COVID patients.

The research is yet in initial stage but it offered a lot of evidences to support, some of the claims which were untested till now. Andrew Josephson, Director of the Neurology Department at the University of California, San Francisco, was impressed and praised the techniques used in the research and said that understanding whether or not the brain is directly involved in this is very important. Till now, doctors believed that the neurological symptoms occurring in almost half of the patients could be because of the abnormal immune response known as Cytokin Storm which causes inflammation of brain.

It would not be completely shocking if the SARS-CoV2 virus gets the capability of breaching the blood-brain barrier, which is the wall around the brain’s blood vessels and protects it from the foreign substances. One of the main believes regarding the theory of invasion of brain by coronavirus is that the brain doesn’t have high levels of a protein by the name of ACE2, which helps the coronavirus to stick.