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Not as mentally present as you thought?
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Photo: Sigrid Olsson / imago / PhotoAlto
People with mild Covid-19 courses and no other long-Covid symptoms can still suffer from reduced attention span and memory loss six to nine months after infection.
This is the result of a study by the University of Oxford.
Difficulty concentrating, accompanied by forgetfulness and tiredness, are well-known signs of Long Covid – a post-disease illness that affects some a while after they have been infected – but how widespread the symptoms are has not yet been grasped.
For the study, which was published in the journal Brain Communications on Wednesday, people were selected who had previously tested positive for Covid-19 but did not report a severe course of the disease or symptoms typical of Long Covid.
They were asked to do exercises to test their memory and perception skills, which were presented to them as a puzzle.
No random selection
Result: Up to six months after infection, the test persons who tested positive were significantly worse at recalling personal experiences.
Up to nine months after infection, their ability to stay alert declined faster than that of uninfected individuals.
"What is surprising is that our Covid-19 recoveries showed reduced alertness and memory loss, although they no longer felt symptomatic at all at the time of the test," said psychologist Sijia Zhao.
"Our results show that people live for months with some chronic cognitive consequences." After that time, the test results returned to normal levels, according to the study.
Other cognitive abilities such as working memory or planning remained consistently unimpaired.
Cambridge University biostatistician Stephen Burgess, who was not involved in the study, pointed out that the analysis only included data from 136 people who were also not randomly selected, but self-reported via an online platform.
"Nevertheless, the differences between the groups with and without Covid in this study are striking," he said.
It is “unlikely that these results can be explained by systematic differences between the groups that have nothing to do with the Covid infection”.
ak/Reuters