The widespread death of the founder of a nationwide chain of steakhouses last week has put the focus on persistent neurological symptoms related to Covid-19.
After experiencing a mild case of the coronavirus last November, entrepreneur W. Kent Taylor developed such debilitating tinnitus that he reportedly told a friend that he slept no more than two hours a night for several months.
The CEO of the Texas Roadhouse chain died of suicide on March 25th in Louisville, Kentucky. In a statement to the local newspaper, the company attributed his death to the relentless ringing in his ears that had become “unbearable.”
The early detection of persistent neurological symptoms related to Covid-19 prompted specialists from Northwestern Medicine, Chicago, to open one of the first clinics in the country in May 2020 to treat long-distance neurological drivers.
In a study published March 23 in the journal Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, clinic director Igor Koralnik and colleagues reported about 100 consecutive patients treated at the clinic between May and November 2020 and had relatively mild Covid-19 Had initial presentations.
The study results add to the growing anecdotal evidence suggesting that persistent neurological symptoms are common in patients without severe onset symptoms.
One of the main messages of our study is that even in patients with mild underlying disease, there is the potential for long-term neurological symptoms and these symptoms can be debilitating
Jeffry R. Clark, co-author of the study and medical student in the Northwest, told BreakingMED.
They concluded that the long-term impact of long-distance symptoms associated with Covid-19 “on quality of life and the potential return to normalcy through loss of productivity and persistent cognitive dysfunction can be significant as the pandemic escalates”.
“More longitudinal studies are needed to assess the cognitive effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection on out-of-hospital individuals as it encompasses the majority of Covid-19 patients and can have a significant impact on staff productivity,” they write .
Show full article
