Brain imaging before and after COVID-19 in UK Biobank

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I suspect that I might have had covid, as my ability to smell or taste anything rancid has gone very feint.
I used rancid butter a while ago, and the almonds I have- the best by is next year, but they gave me a dreadful jippy tum.
The coffee my husband makes is strong - I usually diluted it, but it has not seemed at all strong for a while - I thought that he'd begun to put less into the percolator, but if anything, he's using more.
At least I no longer use my ability as a taster to earn my living.
 
Bruce Stephens said:
Brain imaging before and after COVID-19 in UK Biobank

Our findings thus consistently relate to loss of grey matter in limbic cortical areas directly linked to the primary olfactory and gustatory system.​
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According to the study, it is only those that developed the disease (covid19) that suffered any loss of grey matter. It doesn't differentiate between those that had caught the virus sarscov2 and mounted a sufficient immune response thus preventing disease and those that caught the virus sarscov2 and didn't mount a sufficient immune reponse and thus developed the diesase covid19. This is why it is so important to differeniate between covid19 and sarscov2.

It would be interesting to see if they could split the study further into the effects on the brain in those who had covid19 and those who only caught sarscov2.
 
Amity Island said:
According to the study, it is only those that developed the disease (covid19) that suffered any loss of grey matter. It doesn't differentiate between those that had caught the virus sarscov2 and mounted a sufficient immune response thus preventing disease and those that caught the virus sarscov2 and didn't mount a sufficient immune reponse and thus developed the diesase covid19. This is why it is so important to differeniate between covid19 and sarscov2.

It would be interesting to see if they could split the study further into the effects on the brain in those who had covid19 and those who only caught sarscov2.
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Unless I've mis-read, you've contradicted yourself there.
In the first sentence you say they found loss of grey matter ONLY in those who developed covid-19.
Then you complain that they are not distinguishing between those who had covid and those without.
 
pm133 said:
Unless I've mis-read, you've contradicted yourself there.
In the first sentence you say they found loss of grey matter ONLY in those who developed covid-19.
Then you complain that they are not distinguishing between those who had covid and those without.
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No, there were two groups studied. One with covid19 and those without a positive test. I was asking about looking at those who tested positive but didn't develop covid19.
 
Question - whose brains do/did they scan to produce their figures?

(I had a CT and an MRI scan of my head last August or September-ish after I'd had a weird loss of consciousness on a scorchio day in the open in the summer so was referred to the 'First fit' clinic. Telephone appt with them - she spoke to both me and my husband and her Report inferred surprise that my recollection and his, of the incident, differed. Then concentrated on no evidence of epilepsy and only found something else, can't recall what, but GP said whatever was not uncommon at my age and nowt to get concerned about. They also do them with people suspected of having a TIA. So do all such scans done go into the mix along with the ones done on actual Covid patients or what?)
 
trophywench said:
Question - whose brains do/did they scan to produce their figures?
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It's purely from a subset of UK Biobank. A while ago (pre-pandemic) they did brain scans of some participants so they had the opportunity to do followup scans, some from people who'd had C19 and some who hadn't.

(I remember them asking me, but after a conversation they decided they didn't want to see my brain after all.)
 
My sister is part of the Biobank study and recently went for more scans. She hasn't had Covid.
 
Amity Island said:
One with covid19 and those without a positive test. I was asking about looking at those who tested positive but didn't develop covid19.
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From the abstract:
Here, we studied the effects of the disease in the brain using multimodal data from 782 participants from the UK Biobank COVID-19 re-imaging study, with 394 participants having tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection between their two scans. [...] We further compared COVID-19 patients who had been hospitalised (n=15) with those who had not (n=379), [...]​

I presume most of the "tested positive" people would have been tested because they'd had symptoms, so quite possibly this mostly omits asymptomatic people. This is also not a young population so it's possible younger people would look different.
 
Amity Island said:
Complain? I'm not complaining, I was just thinking it would of been even more useful if they could of had 3 studies within same study.

1. Those without covid 19 before the study and after who had covid19
2. Those without covid 19 before the study and after without covid19
3. Those without covid 19 before and after who only tested positive (but didn't have covid 19)
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I quite agree. Only by doing those 3 studies you mention could you definitely ascribe any change directly due to Covid-19. Otherwise the changes are incidental findings.
 
mikeyB said:
I quite agree. Only by doing those 3 studies you mention could you definitely ascribe any change directly due to Covid-19.
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I'm not quite sure what the issue is. They did try and distinguish between people who tested positive and those who'd tested positive and who were also hospitalised (so probably more serious infections), but the sample was too small (n=15).

Is there some misunderstanding of what they did? They have MRI scans of some people's brains from a few years ago, and they invited back some of those same people to get MRI scans, so they're doing a direct before and after comparison for people who'd had this infection and those who (as far as can be known) hadn't. That seems a meaningful thing to look at? (The control group was formed by trying to match, so I'm sure one can argue about the matching.)
 
But that’s not a true “before and after” if the original brain scan was several years before. Firstly, you have to ask why a brain scan was done- what disease process they were looking for?

I haven’t had Covid, but I have had multiple brain scans over the years. Latterly, the more recent scans would show changes from the first. If I had Covid before the latest scan (the previous one being 5 years previously) then the current medical mindset would ascribe those changes to Covid.

Where this mindset originated was the naming of Long Covid. This is nothing more than Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome, known for years following flu, the Epstein-Barr virus particularly, and other virus infections. The more graphic complications shown after people have been ventilated are the complications of extended ventilation, not the coronavirus. And I would bet that the worst complications are in those hospitalised before Dexamethasone was routinely used as an anti inflammatory. The lesson from this is that thought should be given to use Dexamethasone in all patients on positive pressure ventilation.

Furthermore, the Delta variant now carries a special warning. In young people it can present as simple cold, with sneezes and a runny nose. Just like all the other coronaviruses that give us colds. This is touted as a dangerous way the virus can spread. That is a bloody idiotic response. With all adults vaccinated, who cares whether our kids get colds? We are a hop and a skip towards normality. We have no need to avoid someone sneezing in public, other than the risk that has been touted for a century - coughs and sneezes spread diseases.
 
mikeyB said:
But that’s not a true “before and after” if the original brain scan was several years before. Firstly, you have to ask why a brain scan was done- what disease process they were looking for?
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This is from the UK Biobank cohort. The people who had brain scans were just asked, and they were looking for people who (as far as anyone knew) had healthy brains. (They decided not to scan mine because I'd had a benign brain tumour removed.)

So it seems to me to be about as good as you might hope to get: they had MRI scans from not long ago of people who had healthy brains. (Would have been nice to have had some younger brains (to see if that made a difference), and maybe somewhere there's such a collection of MRI scans but this isn't it.)
 
Yes, my sister had MRI scans a few years ago as part of the Biobank project and follow up scans just 4 weeks ago and I can confirm that she has not had any issues. They have simply done the scans for research. They are not looking for anything untoward in the scans it is just a comparison exercise but if they were to notice anything seriously amiss they would notify the subject and their GP I believe.
 
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