Covid-19 leads to brain changes & Alzheimer's-like dementia, new AI-powered study finds

Cognitive disorders, including dementia, are increasingly being reported as a complication of the highly contagious SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19, researchers behind the recent study at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio have revealed. "Reports of neurological complications in Covid-19 patients and'long-hauler' patients whose symptoms persist after the infection clears are becoming more common, suggesting that [the virus] may have lasting effects on brain function," said the authors of the study, which was published this week in the journal Alzheimer's Research & Therapy. The researchers' aim was to uncover the mechanisms responsible for brain-associated complications such as delirium and the loss of taste or smell that are often found in novel coronavirus patients. In order to do so, they compared on a molecular level the host genes of Covid-19 and those responsible for some neurological disorders. Having collected the data of both Covid-19 patients and people suffering from Alzheimer's disease, they used artificial intelligence to measure the proximity between them.