A new study provides the most conclusive evidence yet that COVID-19 can damage the brain, even in people who weren't severely ill.
The study, published Monday in Nature, used before-and-after brain images of 785 British people, ages 51 to 81, to look for any changes. About half the participants contracted COVID-19 between the scans – mostly when the alpha variant was circulating – which left many people at least temporarily without a sense of smell.
Analysis of the "before" and "after" images from the UK Biobank showed that people infected with COVID-19 had a greater reduction in their brain volumes overall and performed worse on cognitive tests than those who had not been infected.
The federal government has cancelled dozens of grants to study how to prevent new HIV infections...
