Articles related to NEUROLOGICAL DISORDERS

Data for this study came from Danish medical registries over a 20-year period for 247,305 people who visited a hospital or were prescribed antiviral medication for herpes zoster and 1,235,890 people who did not have the disease. These individuals were an average age 64. Up to 21 years later, 9.7% of those with vs. 10.3% of those without herpes zoster developed dementia.

A study published in Nature makes the case that even mild COVID-19 can lead to long-term changes in the human brain. Researchers at Oxford University reported that several months after study participants had COVID-19, they had more gray matter loss and tissue abnormalities, mainly in the areas of the brain associated with smell, and more brain size shrinkage than participants who hadn’t been infected with the virus.

According to the researchers, “The findings from this study suggest that survivors of [HL] require life-long regular screening for early detection of chronic health conditions and that healthy lifestyle behaviors need to be strongly encouraged as these survivors appear more vulnerable to neurocognitive and psychosocial sequelae from these events.”

Two large scale studies featured in The British Medical Journal concluded that mRNA-based vaccines do not appear to be associated with an increased risk of neurological adverse events; and secondly, that risks of Guillain-Barré syndrome and Bell’s palsy are slightly increased after immunization. Overall, the findings of both studies are reassuring about the safety of the vaccines, particularly compared with the observed risks associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection.