Transcript for How COVID-19 affects the brain
Jen, so we are still learning every day how this virus is affecting people who contract covid-19 and we're learning something more about what the effects are on the brain. In the brain, just published data in the lancet psychiatry journal, nd let's talk about this, because we're talking about some major brain effects here. In this study, they found six months after a person was diagnosed with covid-19, one out of every three patients had either psychiatric or neurologic symptoms, so we're talking here about mood disorders, strokes, dementia, these are not trivial symptoms. Also, the first-ever neuropsychiatric diagnoses were almost two times as high in people who have had covid versus people who haven't had covid. Some good news though, the study did not see an increased risk of the neurologic conditions such as Parkinson's disease or guillain-barre syndrome but this is a big red flag, you guys, that these symptoms, these things are coming up way after someone gets diagnosed with covid-19. Both of us had this reaction, wow, and I'm sure viewers having it as well so what are you supposed to do with this if you've had covid. First of all, I think it's awareness on behalf of patients and providers down the road and I hear people say all the time, why should I get vaccinated, the risk of death overall is so low and this is a perfect example of that saying, there are worse things than death, and if you're talking about a long term neurologic other psychiatric disorder, one more reason to get vaccinated to prevent that from happening. Awareness. Dr. Ashton, thank you so much. And we turn now to Elizabeth Schulze with the latest
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