Apparently Covid Aged All Our Brains, Even If You Didn't Catch It

Those with long Covid, a condition which sees symptoms persist months or even years after catching the Covid-19 virus, have long reported “brain fog”.

Though scientists aren’t sure why the link seems to exist, some suspect that Covid can persist in the gut long after the acute infection has gone – creating microbiome changes associated with brain issues.

But new research published in Nature Communications this week (22 July) has suggested the pandemic may have aged all of our brains, whether we caught the virus or not. 

In fact, it appeared to have aged our brains by nearly six months. 

How much did the pandemic age our brains?

The researchers looked at the brain scans of almost 1,000 healthy people from the UK Biobank study.

They checked them before the pandemic, and some had scans after, too. 

Using data from over 15,000 brain scans, along with machine learning and imaging, the scientists predicted the brain age of the participants involved in the study.

After comparing like-for-like scans (participants were matched for gender, age, and health status), the researchers found that, on average, our brains’ ageing appeared to have been accelerated by 5.5 months after the pandemic.

This was the case whether or not participants had actually caught Covid themselves. 

“What surprised me most was that even people who hadn’t had Covid showed significant increases in brain ageing rates,” the study’s lead author Dr Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad said. 

“It really shows how much the experience of the pandemic itself, everything from isolation to uncertainty, may have affected our brain health.”

Why did the pandemic appear to make our brains age faster?

This study didn’t seek to find that out, but its results suggest that brain ageing may have hit men and socioeconomically-disadvantaged people harder. 

The researchers speculated that a lack of socialising and exercise for some in the pandemic may have led to the change, as could increased consumption of alcohol. 

“This study reminds us that brain health is shaped not only by illness, but by our everyday environment,” Dr Dorothee Auer, Professor of Neuroimaging and senior author on the study, said.

“The pandemic put a strain on people’s lives, especially those already facing disadvantage. We can’t yet test whether the changes we saw will reverse, but it’s certainly possible, and that’s an encouraging thought.”