COVID-19 was one of the biggest pandemics in United States history. It changed everything including schooling and many other aspects of life, but do you ever seem to forget what life was like before COVID-19? You may be thinking am I just getting old? Why am I losing my memory? Well, findings in Nature Medicine have shown that you may be suffering from what they are calling “Brain Fog”. This Brain Fog can result in recurring memory and concentration lapses that can make it difficult to function every day. You may be thinking, how does this even relate to COVID? Well, It is believed that this brain fog is developed from blood clots triggered by COVID.
Before we get into the brain fog, I want to explain how the body first reacts to COVID-19 entering your cells. AP Bio we learned, that your body activates its innate and adaptive immune systems. First, the innate system releases mast cells which release histamine along with macrophages that secrete cytokines. Cytokines are small proteins that are crucial in controlling the growth and activity of other immune system cells and blood cells. When released, they signal the immune system to do its job. We then see natural killer cells take out any damaged or infected cells while cytokines attract smaller phagocytes called neutrophils and digest pathogens. Along with the Innate response we see the Adaptive response. The adaptive response relies on B lymphocytes and T lymphocytes. The B lymphocytes create the humoral response while the T activates the cell-mediated response. Both are just as important but different. When T-helper cells recognize the antigen it triggers both responses. In the cell-mediated response, the T-memory cells prevent reinfection while the T-killer cells go and kill any infected cells. In the Humoral response the B-plasma cells, secrete antibodies that bind to and neutralize the pathogen which is then engulfed by a macrophage, while B-memory cells also prevent reinfection. Even with all this protection people may still be left with long last symptoms including brain fog.
To find out if this brain fog really came from COVID, a psychiatrist from Oxford named Maxime Taquet took samples of over 1,800 people in the U.K. who had been hospitalized due to COVID-19 and made 6 six-month checks on their symptoms. When examining the blood, they found that people who still had “brain fog” tended to have elevated levels of at least one of two proteins. The first protein is called a D-dimer protein which is produced when a blood clot breaks down. Patients with high amounts of D-dimer tend to have memory problems yet the cognitive side seems to still be intact. Doctors believe these effects were caused by blood clots in the lungs, which lead to low oxygen levels in the brain. The second and seemingly more dangerous protein to find mass amounts of is fibrinogen. This protein is produced in the liver and causes clotting to stop bleeding. When patients have elevated amounts of fibrinogen during COVID-19, they seem to have memory loss along with scoring poorly on the cognitive test. These patients show signs of dementia. Taquet believes that fibrinogen may have caused blood clots in the brain or somewhere else that directly affects the brain.
After hearing about the findings Resia Pretorius was very excited. From her own research, she has found connections between COVID and brain fog. She believes that the spike protein of COVID binds to the fibrinogen and causes it to change shape. But she believes this discovery can help determine ways to cure long COVID symptoms. So have you been affected by COVID’s brain fog or are you just getting old?
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