Structural MRI correlates of cognitive and neuropsychiatric symptoms in Long COVID: a pilot study

Shantanu H Joshi; Prabha Siddarth; Helen Lavretsky

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1412020

Structural MRI correlates of cognitive and neuropsychiatric symptoms in Long COVID: a pilot study

Front Psychiatry. 2024 Dec 4:15:1412020. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1412020. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Shantanu H Joshi^{1

2}, Prabha Siddarth³, Helen Lavretsky³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Neurology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
² Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
³ Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States.

Abstract

Approximately 7% of COVID-19 patients (1.3% children) have exhibited symptoms of post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC), or Long COVID, and 20% of those present with neuropsychiatric symptoms. While a large number of MRI-based neuroimaging studies in this population have shown cortical atrophy in terms of gray matter volume and cortical thickness in patients, there is a growing body of work showing brain volume enlargements or thickness increases in patients compared to COVID negative controls. To investigate this further, we used structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine differences in gray matter thickness for the cortical limbic and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortical regions between patients with Long COVID and healthy controls. Results showed increased cortical thickness in the caudal anterior, isthmus, and the posterior cingulate gyrus as well as the rostral middle frontal gyrus respectively along with higher gray matter volume in the posterior cingulate and the isthmus cingulate in patients with Long COVID. Cortical thickness and gray matter volumes for regions of interest (ROIs) were also associated with the severity measures, clinical dementia rating, and anxiety scores in the Long COVID group. Our findings provide supporting evidence for cortical hypertrophy in Long COVID.

Keywords: brain; cingulate gyrus; cortical thickness; gray matter volume; long COVID; structural MRI.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This study was supported by funding from the UCLA W.M. Keck Foundation COVID-19 Research Award to SJ and HL and partially supported by the NIH NCCAM AT009198 research award to HL.