A 25-year-old Italian girl who was infected in Corona did not know she was ill. She coughed a little for one day and then lost her sense of smell, but besides, she felt just fine. Only one thing kept bothering her - she still didn't smell anything and her taste was hurt too, everything she tasted felt strange to her. Because she worked in an X-ray hospital and was also exposed to coronary patients who were admitted there, the doctors in the hospital examined her and checked her nose and lung condition, but everything seemed fine, so they decided to have her do a brain MRI scan. How the coronavirus can change the structure of the brain and how it causes the loss of sense of smell.
The olfactory loss is one of a handful of neurological symptoms that doctors believe are caused by the coronavirus. Previous studies have estimated that up to two-thirds of patients with Covid-19 experience this symptom. The new study and the scans it conducted for the first time demonstrate that the sense of smell is not only caused by the presence of the virus in the nasal and respiratory tissues, and has tangible evidence that it also attacks the brain.
The scan revealed changes in the young woman's brain structure in two areas: the rectus gyrus and the olfactory bulb, which is the edge of the neural area responsible for processing olfactory-related information in the nasal cavity. The information transmitted from the olfactory bulb goes to various brain processing areas, one of which is the rectus gyrus. To the untrained eye, these changes may be so minor that they can hardly be discerned, but for the experts from the Italian Institute of IRCCS at the University of Milan in Italy and the Children's Hospital in Boston, USA - the changes were immediately noticeable.
The changes that the experts detected in the young woman's brain scans reminded them of the effects of various viral attacks on the brain, so they recommended that the young woman do a corona test, and the results came back positive.
After 28 days, doctors performed additional MRI scans, in which it could already be seen that the young woman's brain structure was beginning to return, although her olfactory tubercle still seemed a little inflamed. Eventually, the young woman's sense of smell returned to her, and she was not left with permanent brain damage.
Doctors performed MRI scans for two other verified patients who also experienced an olfactory injury, but surprisingly, their scans did not find the same brain structure changes seen in the young woman. However, the researchers note that the changes seen in the young woman's brain do correspond with findings from patients who died of corona and underwent autopsy as well as brain findings from animal experiments with corona. Her case is simply the first in which these brain effects are demonstrated in a living patient.
"Based on the MRI findings and the slight changes in the tuber structure, we can surmise that the SARS-CoV-2 virus may invade the brain through the olfactory passages and impair the function of the tuber," the researchers wrote in their conclusions in the journal. JAMA Neurology. They added that the young woman did not develop any additional symptoms of the disease, suggesting that loss of olfactory is a major symptom of Covid-19 disease and not an associated or marginal symptom.
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