The first year of neurology and COVID-19: The importance of understanding neurological and biopsychosocial symptoms in acute and post neurocovid disease

Abstract

After the first year since its first reporting Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), causing Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has infected nearly 120 million people and resulted in almost more than 2 million deaths globally. After one year from the first report of neurological symptoms in a Chinese patient, more than 55 countries to date have reported symptoms including impaired taste or smell, headache, dizziness, delirium, agitation, stroke, hypoxic ischaemic brain injury, seizures, coma, meningo-encephalitis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, myalgia, amongst others. Consequences seen in the follow-up periods of COVID-19 infection are also becoming more and more apparent mostly with reports of persistent problems with smell or taste, cognitive impairment, headaches, confusion, difficulty concentrating and sleep disturbance. Recently more and more studies on long term consequences of acute COVID are being published, such as the Study NEXT, a longitudinal study done in a population of hospitalized patients in Brescia. First studies show that not only clinical but also biopsychosocial effects are becoming increasingly important as long as more data are collected. Although further research is needed to understand which patients are most vulnerable to neurological manifestations in the acute, long or post COVID-19 disease, however after this first year it is clear that neurological, biopsychosocial and mental health data need to be not only collected but also analysed in a manner that could help the understanding of characteristics, timing, and severity of neurological manifestations of COVID-19.