Vaccination against Covid-19 is important not only to prevent the disease, but especially to reduce more serious complications and, in the most frail people, even death. The recommendation for everyone is to practice the primary course of two vaccinations and then continue to maintain protection with a third and even a fourth dose of vaccine. A vaccine booster (booster) is also recommended for anyone who has been infected with Covid-19: vaccination can be given four months after infection to be even more protected.
Everyone over 60 and frail people should protect themselves with a fourth dose of vaccine, this is also because from September 2022 the new bivalent vaccine (Original/Omicron) is available that is particularly effective against the Omicron variant, which is the one that is circulating the most.
Recent studies confirm that long-term disorders associated with infection, characterized by a picture of symptoms termed Long Covid, are less frequent in vaccinated people.
Long Covid is defined as the set of symptoms (not just respiratory), complaints, and multi-organ complications that may persist many weeks after recovery from Covid-19 infection. It affects nearly one in two people who test positive for Covid-19 and can linger for months.
Long Covid is when complaints persist beyond four weeks, despite a negative swab for Covid-19. Frequent symptoms include fatigue, brain fog(mental fog or cognitive fog), memory and/or concentration problems, loss of sense of smell or taste, cardiological and respiratory symptoms, neurological disorders, anxiety and stress. It is not yet clear whether all these disorders are a direct effect of the damage caused by the virus against one or more organs or by the immune response also triggered by the virus, but then directed against organs and tissues as occurs in the autoimmune reaction when antibodies attack one's own body.Older age, female sex,obesity, andhospitalization are factors that promote the risk of developing Long Covid.
As the Covid-19 pandemic has progressed, it has become increasingly clear how many patients experience Long Covid.
Psychologically and cognitively, several symptoms have been reported: severe fatigue, pain, cognitive fragility. In particular, a number of neuropsychiatric symptoms are highlighted, such asanxiety (13%), depression (12%), sleep disturbances (11%), and cognitive symptoms such asattention (27%), and memory (16%) disturbances, which are now referred to as Neurocovid and can persist even many weeks after recovery from the infection.
It remains unclear whether the virus may directly affect the brain or whether neurological symptoms may depend on nonspecific and indirect causes such as, for example, systemic inflammation and medical interventions such as ventilation). Overall, cognitive domains that are often impaired are those related to executive functions (processes of planning, attention control and coordination, problem solving, metacognition), attention (especially during complex tasks, such as handling multiple pieces of information simultaneously or switching from one occupation to another), and memory.
In this regard, it is often referred to as brain fog or cognitive fog to describe this condition of obnubilation, persistent fatigue and reduced mental efficiency.
Preliminary results of the investigation were published in Frontiers with the aim of assessing cognitive differences and psychological sequelae of Covid-19 between young and elderly healed people assessed within 1 month of the last negative test.
The results confirm that cognition is negatively affected by length of hospitalization, corroborating previous findings that showed detrimental effects of hospitalization on cognition.
The results showed how unexpectedly the negative psychological effects of pandemic Covid-19 particularly affect younger individuals under the age of 65 who complain of experiencing greater cognitive difficulties in daily life after infection. In addition, the presence of posttraumatic stress reactions of young adults is confirmed by the presence of virus-related neurological symptoms, the intensity of care received, and intubation during hospitalization.
Individuals older than 65, on the other hand, appear to suffer less from the consequences due to Covid-19, although they show lower scores on tests of attention, memory, and reasoning.
One possible explanation is that younger people are less accustomed to experiencing the disease than older people who would be more resilient in coping with the pandemic. It is also possible that not only the infection itself, but also the social restrictions, and all the disruptions in daily routines mainly affected younger individuals, rather than older ones, who are now paying the greatest consequences of the pandemic, including cognitive ones.
This confirms how in general the effects of isolation, with the changes in daily routines and the reduction of emotional, social, and physical stimuli, have been a detonator for the rapid increase of neuropsychiatric disorders in the population, particularly the frail.
Another recent work in press is aimed at investigating symptoms of psychological distress in patients cured of Covid-19. This study has a novel element to what is currently shown by national and international researchers.
The data, in fact, show that study participants with high cognitive reserve indices (CRIs), i.e., with high education, having a job that involves a certain degree of commitment and personal responsibility, having cognitively stimulating interests and performing activities of an intellectual nature (e.g., reading books, exhibitions, concerts, lectures), social and sports (e.g., volunteering, sports of all kinds) and recreational (e.g., multi-day trips or artistic activities), experience the traumatic psychological effects of the pandemic to a lesser extent.
In contrast, participants with low CRI index, showed a higher frequency of posttraumatic symptoms.
Cognitive Reserve (CR) refers to individual differences not in anatomy, but in the ways in which information is processed (among them the efficiency and flexibility of neural networks). Such modalities enable a better ability to cope with brain damage.
This attests that leading an active and more stimulus-rich lifestyle can act as a protective factor on mental and cognitive health.
aopd.veneto.it/Long-Covid-psychological-and-cognitive-aspects
Bruno Biagianti et al. Cognitive Assessment in SARS-CoV-2 Patients: A Systematic Review.