A Major Study Has Revealed COVID Can Literally Shrink & Damage Your Brain Tissue

A woman squinting at brain scans. A new study shows COVID can shrink your brain matter.

I regret to inform you that a major study which compared brain scans of people before and after they caught COVID has revealed the virus literally shrinks your brain. My condolences.

Researchers at the University of Oxford studied 785 people aged between 51 and 81 who received brain scans before and during the pandemic. More than half of them tested positive to COVID between the brain scans, which led to some pretty interesting findings.

Compared to the 384 people who didn’t get infected with COVID, those who did had a greater overall brain shrinkage, especially in areas of the brain linked to smell. Compare that with this study that analysed confused olfactory receptors in COVID patients, and maybe we finally have a hypothesis on why the virus makes things smell like either nothing or bin juice.

The cerebellum was also found to have greater tissue loss in those who contracted COVID. This area of the brain is linked to mental performance and these individuals also tested lower on mental skills tests than their COVID-free counterparts.

Considering scientists are still researching the long term effects of having COVID, including persistent symptoms like brain fog, these scans are a valuable insight into the biology of the virus.

The effects of COVID on brain tissue were more pronounced in people who were older or hospitalised because of the virus, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t affect young people with milder infections.

Don’t panic yet though my fellow smooth brains — researchers are still investigating whether these brain changes are permanent, since the brain is a pretty resilient thing and is fixing itself all the time.

“The brain is plastic, which means that it can re-organise and heal itself to some extent, even in older people,” University of Oxford Professor Gwenaëlle Douaud said, per The Guardian.

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