The Reading Room Podcast: New Research Findings on Long Covid and Mild Cognitive Impairment

Emerging research continues to affirm a significant association between the development of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Long Covid.

For the observational study, recently published in Alzheimer’s and Dementia, researchers compared the cumulative incidence over a 4.4-year period between Long Covid patients, people who recovered from COVID-19 and healthy controls. The total cohort was comprised of 260 participants with a median age of 70, according to the study. The study authors noted that MCI diagnosis was based on a combination of factors, including neuropsychological testing, MRI, patient and informant interviews, and plasma and positron emission tomography (PET) biomarkers when available.

The researchers found that 27 percent of people with Long Covid had MCI in contrast to 5 percent of those who recovered from COVID-19 and 1 percent of COVID-19-negative controls. The development of MCI was nearly four times more likely for people with Long Covid, according to the study.

In a new Diagnostic Imaging podcast, lead study author Jennifer Frontera, M.D., noted that study participants with Long Covid not only had a higher percentage of MCI but Alzheimer’s disease type MCI as well.

“This difference was notable because we compared it not just to recovered COVID patients, but to COVID-negative controls. This was over about four years from the pandemic onset in New York City, and about two years from incident COVID infection in the group that was COVID-positive. So it appears that despite being a younger cohort, the Long Covid folks tended to have a higher incidence or risk of developing mild cognitive impairment,” noted Dr. Frontera, a professor in the Department of Neurology in the Division of Neurocritical Care at New York University (NYU) Langone Health.

Dr. Frontera also noted that the higher MCI prevalence was not related to prior hospitalization for COVID-19.

“I think there was a concern that some of this might be related to systemic illness. Perhaps patients that were hospitalized had some component of hypoxic brain injury, and that would be driving the results. But we did a sub-analysis excluding hospitalized patients, and it turned out the same. So even among people that were never severely hypoxic from index COVID, they still had higher risk of MCI if they had Long Covid than those who did not have Long Covid,” pointed out Dr. Frontera.

(Editor’s note: For related content, see “Brain MRI Data Suggests Possible Link Between Enlarged Choroid Plexus in Long Covid Patients and Alzheimer’s Disease,” “Video Interview: Is There an Increased Incidence of Neurodegenerative Diseases in Patients with COVID-19?” and “Chest CT for Post-COVID-19 Abnormalities: Nine Takeaways from a Multi-Society Consensus Statement.”)

For more insights from Dr. Frontera, listen below or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.