Brain Imaging Before and After Covid

Brain Imaging Before and After Covid in UK Biobank. I am familiar with privacy and abuse issues with the government holding a great store of medical information about its residents. Worth discussing another day.   But this is the upside.  Brain imaging had been done on many, many people in the UK before Covid was even heard of. After Covid has circulated and a lot of folks have had it, you can track down those who have previously had imaging and scan 'em again to look for changes. It eliminates a possible complication: Unlike in post hoc disease studies, the availability of pre-infection imaging data helps avoid the danger of pre-existing risk factors or clinical conditions being mis-interpreted as disease effects.  

I have mentioned my concern about the long-term neurological effects of Covid.  When people lose their sense of smell or sense of taste it strongly suggests neurological involvement.  When a person arrived at my hospital with olfactory hallucinations, ordering a neuro consult was routine. Therefore I was interested in the following part of their conclusions.

Our findings thus consistently relate to loss of grey matter in limbic cortical areas directly linked to the primary olfactory and gustatory system.

We might hope that these diminish or even disappear over time.  But it is something to be aware of. 

Thanks to regular reader Thos. for passing this along.