The authors examined around 500 patients who were admitted with confirmed Covid-19 diagnosis.
Neurological manifestations are surprisingly common in Covid-19 infection with roughly 40% patients presenting with symptoms at the onset and in around 60% patients at the time of hospitalization. Over all, about 80% of all patients had neurological symptoms at some point during the disease course.
The common symptoms are muscle aches, headache, encephalopathy, dizziness and altered tastes or smell sensation.
| Muscle Aches |
42% |
|
Headache |
38% |
|
Encephalopathy |
32% |
|
Dizziness |
30% |
|
Altered taste |
16% |
|
Loss of smell |
11% |
Patients with neurological symptoms stayed longer in the hospital, particularly the one who had encephalopathy who stayed over three times longer.
In most cases the presence of such symptoms did not result in worse condition at discharge or increased death rate, except for encephalopathy which independently resulted in less favorable outcome.
The mechanism how Covid-19 virus causes encephalopathy could not be determined with certainty but likely causes are more than one, including systemic disease, inflammation, blood clotting disorder, direct involvement of the nervous system by the virus, changes in the blood vessels and immune response.
Reference:
Frequent neurologic manifestations and encephalopathy‐associated morbidity in Covid‐19 patients.
Liotta etal. Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology 2020:7(11):2221-2230