How does COVID-19 affect kids’ brains? Doctors cite concern over lasting effects
Concerns are rising about the potential lasting effects of the novel coronavirus on children’s brains during a time when important development in the organ is underway.
Many kids who contract COVID-19 develop multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), which can be serious and even deadly. It affects the heart, lungs, kidneys, skin, eyes and brain — the latter of which has sparked a handful of children to develop neurological symptoms.
Symptoms include confusion, headaches, muscle weakness and reduced reflexes. These COVID-19 consequences are even more prevalent in adults, some of whom have more recently started to develop MIS-C as well.
However, it’s still unclear how long these issues in children can last and whether they are a consequence of MIS-C or of the coronavirus itself, experts say.
“When you have so many millions of people who are suffering from acute infection, I think it’s only going to be a matter of time before we see more and more of these [neurological] cases,” Dr. Arun Venkatesan, a neurologist specializing in infectious diseases at the John Hopkins Encephalitis Center, told NBC News. “We’ve certainly seen some, and I fear that we are just at the beginning.”
Of 27 children infected with COVID-19 and who developed MIS-C, four developed neurological symptoms in one study based in London. Brain imaging showed changes in the corpus callosum, the part of the brain hypothesized to play a role in cognition.
The coronavirus is known to cause inflammation in the body; it’s a result of an overworked immune system trying to heal itself.
“I think that COVID has taught us that every time we feel complacent, that we know the spectrum, a new spectrum sort of evolves,” pediatric neurologist Dr. Ming Lim at Evelina London Children’s Hospital told NBC News. “We worry that the long-term effect would be in essentially brain growth.”
Although the brain develops and changes into adulthood, the first eight years of a child’s life are vital to healthy development, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Proper nutrition, experiences in life, genes, and exposure to toxins or infections all determine how well a brain develops.
A separate study on 43 adults with coronavirus showed that 10 had temporary brain dysfunction with delirium, 12 suffered from brain inflammation, eight had strokes and another eight experienced nerve damage. Meanwhile, most of the adults with neurological cases developed a separate rare disorder called acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM), according to the study published last month in the journal Brain. ADEM is typically seen in children and can be triggered by viral infections
“We should be vigilant and look out for these complications in people who have had Covid-19,” study lead author Dr. Michael Zandi, an associate professor at the University College London, said in a news release. “Whether we will see an epidemic on a large scale of brain damage linked to the pandemic ... remains to be seen.”
This story was originally published August 5, 2020 at 2:57 PM with the headline "How does COVID-19 affect kids’ brains? Doctors cite concern over lasting effects."
