Neurological Manifestations in COVID-19 Population: A Short Review

Coronaviruses (CoVs) have a neuroinvasive potential, which has been discussed in various research papers. During the current pandemic, the novel CoV, i.e., SARS-CoV-2, is causing a considerable number of fatalities and posing a great danger of a recurrent epidemic. COVID-19 has been labeled as a public health emergency of international concern, and the epidemic curves are on the rise.

Some studies discuss the neurological implications of SARS-CoV-2 but in light of growing number of evidences we cannot ignore the planning of mental health care settings in COVID-19. We are discussing how this novel CoV can affect the human brain directly and indirectly, including psychiatric problems, and how neurological conditions can be explored as a diagnostic tool in COVID-19 by analyzing cohort studies and review papers that discuss the recent neurological findings in COVID-19.

Current research and review papers were searched to find out any relation between the COVID-19 disease and the altered mental health. This study attempts to find out neurological symptoms in a large population affected by COVID-19 and thus filtering out individual case reports and cohort studies which have a patient pool of less than 50.

This unique observation revealed that SARS-CoV-2 has direct neurological manifestations such as anosmia and gustatory impairment, encephalopathy, and seizures as well as an indirect effect on the psychiatric health such as anxiety, amnesia, etc. because of psychosocial stress.

The most commonly reported neurological symptoms should not be ignored and must be tested for COVID-19. More neurological studies like medical imaging and neuropathology should be performed on these COVID-19 patients.