Cerebral Metabolic Rate of Glucose and Cognitive Tests in Long COVID Patients

Background: Common long-term sequelae after COVID-19 include fatigue and cognitive impairment. Although symptoms interfere with daily living, the underlying pathology is largely unknown. Previous studies report relative hypometabolism in frontal, limbic and cerebellar regions suggesting focal brain...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Brain sciences Vol. 13; no. 1; p. 23
Main Authors: Miskowiak, Kamilla W., Bech, Johanne L., Henriksen, Alexander Cuculiza, Johnsen, Stine, Podlekareva, Daria, Marner, Lisbeth
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 22.12.2022
MDPI
Subjects:
brain metabolism
Cerebellum
Cognition
Cognitive ability
cognitive impairment
Complications
Coronary vessels
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Education
Executive function
Glucose
Hospitalization
Memory
Metabolic rate
Metabolism
Neuropsychology
PET
Plasma
Positron emission tomography
quality of life
Questionnaires
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
Short term memory
Verbal learning
work function
United States > US
Chicago Illinois
COVID-19
brain metabolism
work function
FDG
cognitive impairment
brain fog
positron emission tomography
quality of life
PET
ISSN:2076-3425, 2076-3425
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Background: Common long-term sequelae after COVID-19 include fatigue and cognitive impairment. Although symptoms interfere with daily living, the underlying pathology is largely unknown. Previous studies report relative hypometabolism in frontal, limbic and cerebellar regions suggesting focal brain involvement. We aimed to determine whether absolute hypometabolism was present and correlated to same day standardized neurocognitive testing. Methods: Fourteen patients included from a long COVID clinic had cognitive testing and quantitative dynamic [18F]FDG PET of the brain on the same day to correlate cognitive function to metabolic glucose rate. Results: We found no hypometabolism in frontal, limbic and cerebellar regions in cognitively impaired relative to cognitive intact patients. In contrast, the cognitive impaired patients showed higher cerebellar metabolism (p = 0.03), which correlated with more severe deficits in working memory and executive function (p = 0.03). Conclusions: Hypermetabolism in the cerebellum may reflect inefficient brain processing and play a role in cognitive impairments after COVID-19.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
content type line 23
ISSN:2076-3425
2076-3425
DOI:10.3390/brainsci13010023