While many studies initially described mild and transient depressive or anxiety mood symptoms in people infected with or recovering from COVID-19, few studies have focused on patients with severe psychiatric symptoms. New evidence now suggests that in addition to mild mood changes, patients with COVID-19 may be indeed at higher risk for more severe psychiatric symptoms. This week, I would like to focus on a study published in Translational Psychiatry, in which Xie et al. conducted an electronic medical records-based study in Wuhan, China and details psychiatric conditions in patients with …
Autopsy Study Reveals Immune Cell Infiltration into CNS
I had previously written about an autopsy study that found SARS-CoV-2 RNA existed in the brain, providing evidence for direct viral infiltration into the CNS (Puelles et al., 2020) - however, this virus is likely causing neurological symptoms in ways beyond direct infiltration. Writing in The Lancet Microbe, Schurink et al. provide evidence that the inflammatory response during COVID-19 leads to immune cell infiltration into many organs, including the brain. The breadth of tissue they analyzed was extensive, so I will only summarize their findings on the brain. The authors sampled organs …
COVID-19-Associated Persistent Psychosis
Over the past few months, I have come across case studies that have described psychosis and delirium as potential symptoms of COVID-19, but none have described persistent psychosis after infection with COVID-19. This week, a report in The British Journal of Psychiatry describes such a case in the UK (Lim, et al., 2020). The patient was a 55-year-old white female. She had a 14 day history of fever, myalgia, breathlessness, cough, anosmia, ageusia, and headache. Her medical history had nothing abnormal besides resolved renal calculi (kidney stones) and she was not on any medications. She had …