A third of Covid survivors suffer neurological or mental disorders: study | Hacker News Reader

A third of Covid survivors suffer neurological or mental disorders: study

reuters.com

44 pointsunionpivo20 comments

This was already discussed yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26730813

This seems to be the study:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...

Edit: Not sure maybe this should be the link ? But Reuters has nice synopsis

Can the study result be: "A third of anyone suffer nerological or mental disorders due to the world situation/lockdowns'?

My country just opened a couple things and I have been talking with a lot of friends/coaches/workers. Pretty much every one of them (including myself) have these symptoms, having caught covid or not. I see people that were in general 'happy' feel depressed, run down, see little hope. I see their 'face' changes from pre covid to post covid. The people that lost their jobs.

Not wanting to be pro/against lockdowns, but I believe we will see a long effects of this for years to come.

I wish I had a dogecoin for every HN comment where a study is rejected because of a possible confounding variable that the researchers did control for and reported.

From the news article:

> The disorders were significantly more common in COVID-19 patients than in comparison groups of people who recovered from flu or other respiratory infections over the same time period

They controlled for the world situation, lockdown and even being sick with another illness. Of course the knowledge that you have covid could be stressful in itself, but that's also a result of covid.

I have also noticed the trend in HN comments toward kneejerk reactionary pessimism typically rooted in preestablished ideological positions.

It’s a combination of people not reading the articles AND the absolute crap ton of bad research that gets published.

9 times out of 10, if the finding goes against conventional wisdom, it’s because the research was poor.

I’m saying this as a scientist who has published before.

> Of course the knowledge that you have covid could be stressful in itself, but that's also a result of covid.

It's not just the result of covid. It's also the result of studies like this.

> All cohorts included patients older than 10 years who had an index event on or after Jan 20, 2020

There were lockdowns on Jan 20, 2020? I thought lockdown measures basically eliminated influenza diagnoses—-were the majority of control cases diagnosed before lockdown measures were implemented?

Please take a look at the study before making such an offhand comment. It clearly shows that these effects are more likely for people who actually got COVID than for the control cohort, who experienced the same lockdown measures, by a factor of 80%.

https://els-jbs-prod-cdn.jbs.elsevierhealth.com/cms/attachme...

While I agree that it was an offhand comment, if you look closely at the chart you posted, the weakest correlation is on the bottom right under "mood, anxiety, and psychotic disorders" which is what I believe OP was implying. Under that category, you only see a small difference between the COVID-19 and "other RTI" populations.

People who got covid19 during a lockdown were also more likely to be in harrowing situations: working 'essential' jobs, living in multigen households in constant fear of infecting loved ones, etc.

I don't think that this is an effective control. Of course people who got the virus are during the lockdown are even more likely to have traumatic effects from the lockdown. I'm surprised it's only 80%.

> All cohorts included patients older than 10 years who had an index event on or after Jan 20, 2020

I thought lockdown measures basically eliminated influenza diagnoses. Lockdown measures also occurred well after Jan 20, 2020.

What’s the temporal distribution of control cases vs. COVID cases? Were the vast majority of control cases diagnosed before lockdown measures?

Or it is due to general uncertainty, anxiety due to the on going pandemic, having lost someone... Countless of reasons. So the article took a subset, Covid survivors. If it is a general problem, and if so why, can only be answered by additional studies. A conclusive answer might be difficult to get so.

> Can the study result be: "A third of anyone suffer nerological or mental disorders due to the world situation/lockdowns'?

No, because basic science says you control for stuff like that (no, I didn't read the full study) when computing your result.

Lockdowns may be difficult, and that's worth studying too. But they were clearly needed, and evidence like this is why. Covid is really bad.

>Can the study result be: "A third of anyone suffer nerological or mental disorders due to the world situation/lockdowns'?

Mental health has a stigma and often little to no coverage/help. Therefore the 1/3rd is an absolute minimum. The actual numbers are likely far significantly higher.

World Health Org is against lockdowns https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/who-official-urges-...

This is because of the mental health concerns. The problem is that politicians are not going off experts but rather covid lockdowns are political and not based in science.

Are there any theories why this is happening?

It it "just" the mentally difficult situation people are in, who get infected? Or is there some neurological damage done by the virus? Maybe even permanent damage?

I am a bit suspicious of how this result is being presented in the media. The overwhelming bulk of the diagnoses are for anxiety and depression. Which seem like pretty typical reactions to an extreme emotional trauma like hospitalization during a pandemic, and are fairly common reactions to long term recovery from a major illness even during less desperate times where treatment is more readily available.

The elevated rates of stroke and dementia are more concerning, but are a less startling 7% and 2% respectively of the observed population. I’m not sure if the authors controlled well for confounding conditions either.

> Which seem like pretty typical reactions to an extreme emotional trauma like hospitalization during a pandemic

The article covers this:

>> Anxiety, at 17%, and mood disorders, at 14%, were the most common, and did not appear to be related to how mild or severe the patient’s COVID-19 infection had been.

So these disorders aren't caused by the trauma from hospitalization.

There is preliminary data on a condition being termed Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (MIS-C and MIS-A for adult and children versions), where there immune response to SARS-cov-2 causes any number of organs to become inflamed.

However, very little is known about why it manifests or how extensive it is. Brain autoimmunity or even just cardiovascular restriction due to inflammation can cause neurological effects.

* I am not a doctor, but had covid and have many of these symptoms

One mechanism was discovered that could explain the brain fog, fatigue and other neuro symptoms - virus infiltration in bone marrow which leads to megakaryocyte cells (the cells that normally produce red blood cells) entering the bloodstream, settling in lungs, and getting trapped in small brain capillaries.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/...

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