Neurological symptoms like fatigue common in mild Covid

'Long Covid' symptoms include fatigue, depression, breathlessness and a cough - Credit: Edward Jenner on  Pexels - Neurological and psychiatric symptoms such as fatigue and depression are common among people with Covid-19 and may be just as likely in people with mild cases, according to a new review study led by a UCL researcher. By reviewing evidence from 215 studies of Covid-19, the meta-analysis published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry reports a wide range of ways that Covid-19 can affect mental health and the brain. Lead author Dr Jonathan Rogers (UCL Psychiatry and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust) said: "We had expected that neurological and psychiatric symptoms would be more common in severe Covid-19 cases, but instead we found that some symptoms appeared to be more common in mild cases. It appears that Covid-19 affecting mental health and the brain is the norm, rather than the exception." The research team systematically reviewed evidence from 215 studies of Covid-19 from 30 countries, involving a total of 105,638 people with acute symptoms of Covid-19, including data up until July 2020 (acute refers to the main disease stage, rather than longer-term impacts). The studies varied as to which symptoms they were tracking, and the research team pooled data to compare how common each symptom was among the studies that tracked it. Across the whole dataset, the most common neurological and psychiatric symptoms were: anosmia (loss of smell; reported by 43% of patients with Covid-19), weakness (40%), fatigue (38%), dysgeusia (loss of taste; 37%), myalgia (muscle pain; 25%), depression (23%), headache (21%) and anxiety (16%).