People with long Covid feared to be at risk of developing dementia

[superadmin]

SINGAPORE - Weeks or months after they recover from Covid-19, some people continue to report poor concentration, memory difficulties and other cognitive issues, which experts fear may put them at risk of dementia years later.

There is also growing concern that some of these "long-haulers" may get the dementia-related changes earlier than expected.

The United Kingdom's National Institute of Clinical Excellence defines long Covid as having more than four weeks of symptoms after having Covid-19.

The Alzheimer's Disease International (ADI), a federation of Alzheimer's associations around the globe, recently said that it had formed a working group of global experts to study the magnitude of the problem and make recommendations on how to deal with it.


It warned that the current pandemic could lead to a surge in dementia cases, and called for urgent research to be done on the link between long Covid and dementia.

Anything that diminishes a person's cognitive reserve and resilience is going to allow neurodegenerative processes to accelerate, said United States-based cognitive disorder neurologist Alireza Atri, who chairs ADI's 75-member Medical and Scientific Advisory Panel that is leading the research on this link. This can then cause symptoms of neurological disorders, such as dementia, to show earlier.


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