Alien Cells May Explain COVID 'Brain Fog'
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The long-term neurologic symptoms such as "brain fog" experienced by some patients with COVID-19 may be caused by a unique pathology — the occlusion of brain capillaries by large megakaryocyte cells, a new report suggests. The authors report five separate post-mortem cases from patients who died with COVID-19 in which large cells resembling megakaryocytes were identified in cortical capillaries. Immunohistochemistry subsequently confirmed their megakaryocyte identity. They point out that the finding is of interest as — to their knowledge — megakaryocytes have not been found in the brain before.
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@abhishikta Some other viruses cause changes in the brain such as encephalopathy, and as neurologic symptoms are often reported in COVID-19, I was curious to see if similar effects were seen in brain post-mortem samples from patients who had died with the infection. By occluding flow through individual capillaries, these large cells could cause ischemic alteration in a distinct pattern, potentially resulting in an atypical form of neurologic impairment