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Intercultural Senior Center
The long-term impact of the coronavirus
ou’re invited to visit the Intercultural Senior Center (ISC), 5545 Center St., for the following: • Morning exercise classes. Mondays: Tai Chi. Wednesdays: Zumba. Fridays: Tai Chi/weights. Classes are held from 9 to 10. Bring water. Masks, which are available upon request, are required. The ISC follows CDC and state guidelines for physical distancing, indoor health and safety protocols. These classes are open to 14 older adults only. During bad weather, call to confirm if the class is available that day.
The ISC is offering online learning videos which can be accessed from the safety and comfort of your home at interculturalseniorcenter.org and on Facebook at ISC Class Connect. A monthly food pantry is available at the ISC for persons age 50 or older. The ISC is looking for home delivered meals volunteers on Wednesdays and Fridays @ 10:30 a.m. More information is available at interculturalseniorcenter.org. The ISC is a site for ENOA’s Grab-n-Go meals Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Reserve your meal before 10 a.m. the day prior. Recipients must be age 60 or older. A contribution is suggested. The ISC’s SAVE bus can bring case management services to your doorstep. For more information, please call 402-444-6529.
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A cure is in sight 800-610-4558 • Fightblindness.org
By Dr. Henry W. Mahncke
I
t appears increasingly likely that COVID-19 will have a long-lasting impact on the brain health and cognitive abilities of many people who have otherwise recovered from the disease’s acute symptoms. Surprisingly, the effects are significant even in younger patients where the cognitive deficits can be similar to symptoms associated with age-related cognitive decline. A recent study from researchers at the Imperial College London, Cambridge University, King’s College London, and the University of Chicago indicated there may be chronic cognitive consequences from COVID-19 which scale with the severity of symptoms from the disease, and which are evident even in those who were never hospitalized. The researchers reported a reduction in overall cognitive ability for those who were hospitalized and on ventilators to roughly equivalent to the average loss in cognitive abilities over a 10-year period as people age. Previous studies of people hospitalized with other respiratory diseases indicate cognitive deficits persisting for at least five years after hospitalization, so the researchers note these results aren’t surprising. What struck the researchers as unexpected is there was also a deficit, though not as large, among people not put on a ventilator and among people never hospitalized. Among people hospitalized but not put on a ventilator, the deficits reported by the researchers were 20% smaller. Among those who remained home the deficits were 80% smaller. As a neuroscientist not involved with this study, I found these results of great interest. Normally, infectious diseases shouldn’t have significant effects on the brain, because the brain has a defensive system – the blood-brain barrier – composed of specialized cells that form a wall that should keep infectious agents like virus and bacteria out of the brain. While any illness that can cause a fever may lead to short-term cognitive issues, typically those problems are transient and go away when the fever resolves itself. As the COVID-19 crisis emerged in 2020, neuroscientists kept a careful eye on reports there might be more significant brain health issues associated with the coronavirus. At first, many assumed the reports of attention, memory problems, and fogginess were like what would be reported with the ordinary flu. It soon became HorizonAD-2010:HorizonAD-08 2/4/10 clear 8:00 AM these symptoms were distinct and worse
with the coronavirus. When reports began emerging that people with COVID-19 were losing their sense of taste and smell, neuroscientists knew that signified a big concern because it suggested the virus was somehow affecting neurological function directly despite the protective blood-brain barrier. Recent data suggests a COVID-19 infection weakens the blood-brain barrier perhaps as a side-effect of the immune system’s efforts to fight the infection and perhaps by direct action of the virus itself. In either case, it’s clear individuals with severe COVID-19 can develop a number of neurological complications including blood clotting, stroke, encephalopathies, microbleeds, and inflammatory syndrome. That’s in addition to the well-known risks to cognitive function arising from spending time in an intensive care unit. This paints a worrisome picture for neuroscientists studying COVID and certainly for people who have suffered a COVID-19 infection and their loved ones. This study provides more evidence for an increasingly common viewpoint that COVID “longhaulers” can have neurological and cognitive symptoms that far outlast the period of time when they’re actively suffering from a COVID infection. In this way, the coronavirus may be like certain other conditions such as cancer, HIV infection, or concussion where some patients are afflicted by cognitive symptoms that are long-lasting and aren’t addressed by the health care system. Even people who are uninfected and following health guidelines (staying at home, maintaining social distance) face cognitive issues. Our brains are healthiest when stimulated. If you are socializing less and staying at home, it’s likely you encounter less cognitive stimulation each day than you did before the pandemic. If your brain doesn’t need to be as sharp, its processing slows and gets fuzzier over time which can lead to cognitive issues. With new vaccines and treatments at the early stages of distribution, the next question is what, if anything, we can do to address these cognitive issues. Studies of similar cognitive deficits – albeit from different causes – have shown these types of deficits can be reversed across a wide variety of patient populations including older adults, persons with mild cognitive impairment, chemobrain, mild traumatic brain injury, and heart failure. COVID is an area in which the same sorts of tools should now be put to the test. (Dr. Page 1 Mahncke is a neuroscientist in San Francisco.)
Attorneys at Law William E. Seidler Jr.
www.seidler-seidler-law.com 10050 Regency Circle, Suite 525 Omaha, NE 68114-5705
The Sierra Group, LLC FREE Book & CD Call Us: (800) 309-0753
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February 2021
