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Early postmortem brain MRI findings in COVID-19 non-survivors
Tim Coolen1, Valentina Lolli1, Niloufar Sadeghi1
1From the Department of Radiology (T.C., V.L., N.S.), Department of Nuclear Medicine (A.R., N.T., S.G., X.D.T.), Intensive Care Unit (F.S.T., J.C.), Department of Internal Medicine (S.H., J.-C.G.), Department of Neurosurgery (O.D.W.), and Department of Neurology (G.N.), CUB Hôpital Erasme, and Laboratoire de Cartographie fonctionnelle du Cerveau (T.C., V.L., A.R., N.T., S.G., X.D.T.), UNI-ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium.
Objectives:
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is considered to have potential neuroinvasiveness that might lead to acute brain disorders or contribute to respiratory distress in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). This study investigates the occurrence of structural brain abnormalities in non-survivors of COVID-19 in a virtopsy framework.
Methods:
In this prospective, monocentric, case series study, consecutive patients who fulfilled the following inclusion criteria benefited from an early postmortem structural brain MRI: death <24 hours, SARS-CoV-2 detection on nasopharyngeal swab specimen, chest CT scan suggestive of COVID-19, absence of known focal brain lesion, and MRI compatibility.
Results:
Among the 62 patients who died of COVID-19 from March 31, 2020, to April 24, 2020, at our institution, 19 decedents fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Parenchymal brain abnormalities were observed in 4 decedents: subcortical microbleeds and macrobleeds (2 decedents), cortico-subcortical edematous changes evocative of posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome (PRES; 1 decedent), and nonspecific deep white matter changes (1 decedent). Asymmetric olfactory bulbs were found in 4 other decedents without downstream olfactory tract abnormalities. No brainstem MRI signal abnormality was observed.
Conclusions:
Postmortem brain MRI demonstrates hemorrhagic and PRES-related brain lesions in non-survivors of COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2-related olfactory impairment seems to be limited to olfactory bulbs. Brainstem MRI findings do not support a brain-related contribution to respiratory distress in COVID-19.
