Publisher Health

A recent Pfizer or Moderna mRNA-vaccine booster provided good but temporary protection against infection by the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, according to a study from researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine — Qatar.
In the study, published June 15 in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers analyzed the Omicron wave in Qatar last winter, comparing prior infections, vaccine immunity and combinations thereof among more than 100,000 Omicron-infected and non-infected individuals.
The analysis showed, as expected, that full mRNA vaccination plus a booster dose, atop natural immunity due to infection by an earlier variant, was associated with the strongest protection from Omicron infection. However, vaccine immunity against new infection appeared to wane rapidly, whereas people with a prior-variant infection were moderately protected from Omicron with little decline in protection even a year after their prior infection.
The study, the most comprehensive of its kind in investigating different combinations of immunity for Omicron-variant SARS-CoV-2 infections, also found evidence that both vaccination and prior infection provided strong and durable protection from severe, critical, or fatal COVID-19 during the Omicron wave.
“We found that the rates of severe COVID-19 during Qatar’s Omicron wave were very low even among those who had only two doses of vaccine or only a prior infection,” said study first author Dr. Heba Altarawneh, a postdoctoral research associate who conducted this study working with study senior author Dr. Laith Abu-Raddad, a professor of population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine — Qatar and at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York.
Qatar’s highly centralized and comprehensive electronic health records database, which includes all RT-PCR tests for SARS-CoV-2 performed in the country, permits unusually rapid and large-scale epidemiological studies. Dr. Abu-Raddad and colleagues have already published prominent papers on infection and illness rates for prior SARS-CoV-2 variants and waves.

A novel staging framework that assesses the progression of Huntington’s disease (HD), similar to the way cancer is staged 0 to 4, has been developed by UCL scientists as part of an international consortium; this ‘significant’ step paves the way for clinical trials of drugs in the earliest phase of disease.
HD is a progressive and devastating genetic (inherited) neurodegenerative disorder, that affects about 1 in 10,000 people in the UK.
There are currently no approved therapies that can slow the disease progression. The Huntington’s Disease Integrated Staging System (HD-ISS) groups together people with HD (PwHD) according to their underlying biological (including genetic), clinical, and functional characteristics. It is the first time ever a staging system has been developed for a genetic neurological condition.
Published in The Lancet Neurology, the new evidenced-based framework, also includes criteria to biologically define HD stages across the whole trajectory of the disease from birth, which has never previously been done before.
The HD-ISS staging criteria covers the entire disease spectrum, beginning at Stage 0 (individuals with the HD genetic mutation without any detectable pathological change), Stage 1 (subsequent progression marked by measurable indicators of underlying pathophysiology via biomarkers), Stage 2 (a detectable clinical phenotype), and finally Stage 3 (decline in function).
At this stage the HD-ISS is for research purposes only, not clinical practice.

Women can no longer get a legal abortion in two states.Although Roe v. Wade remains the law of the land, women can no longer get a legal abortion in two states, Oklahoma and South Dakota. In at least one other, Missouri, the only clinic is booked and not accepting new appointments. And in a fourth state, Wisconsin, clinics will not schedule abortions for after the end of the Supreme Court’s term in late June.Before May 2, when a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe was leaked, there had been at least one abortion clinic in every state. But in some states, health care providers aren’t waiting for the actual decision to be issued to start operating as if Roe were overturned.“It’s already happening,” said Caitlin Myers, a professor of economics at Middlebury College who studies abortion accessibility. She is leading a national survey of abortion clinics and supplied data on her recent findings, which was verified by The New York Times.The changes in the last few weeks suggest how quickly an overturning of Roe could reduce abortion access across the South and Midwest, which would be a hard-fought victory for the anti-abortion movement. A survey published Wednesday by the Guttmacher Institute found that abortions had increased around the country between 2017 and 2020, reversing decades of declines. Around one in five pregnancies ended in abortion during that period.Roe guarantees a constitutional right to abortion until the point of fetal viability, around 23 weeks, and without it, around half of states are expected to ban the procedure. Many of those states already had limited access — six had a single clinic, and three had two — and various restrictions that made abortions harder to get. Now it is changing from hard to impossible, at least without crossing state lines.In Oklahoma, clinics have stopped operating because the state passed a new ban, even though it clearly conflicts with Roe. “We haven’t had abortion for two and a half weeks,” said Susan Braselton, a clinic escort and a board member of the Roe Fund in Oklahoma, which helps patients finance abortions. Ms. Braselton said she had expected intervention from the courts to stop the law from being enforced: “I would never have thought this would happen.”Jim Olsen, a Republican state representative in Oklahoma who has been a leader on adding several abortion restrictions in the state, said, “This is something that people have worked on and prayed for for 50 years, so it’s a tremendous victory.”Read More on the U.S. Abortion DebateEvolving Language: As they fight for abortion rights, progressive groups and organizations are adopting more inclusive terms, such as “pregnant people” and “cheastfeeding.”Sports: The end of Roe v. Wade could have far-reaching implications for college athletes across the nation — and Oklahoma’s mainstay softball championships in particular.Without Exception: While most of the population supports carve-outs allowing abortions in cases like rape or incest, many of the bans that would go into effect after Roe do away with them.Mental Health: Anti-abortion groups argue that having an abortion can affect a woman’s mental health. But a new study shows that being denied one can be more harmful.The only clinic in South Dakota, Planned Parenthood in Sioux Falls, which also served patients from North Dakota and Minnesota, performed its last abortion Monday, even though the state has not yet banned it. Abortions at the clinic were already sporadic. A Minnesota doctor flew in around once a month to provide them.And in some other states, legal abortion has become much more scarce. In Idaho there were four clinics, but Planned Parenthood in Boise closed June 1. At another, Compassionate Abortion Care in Boise, the only doctor is set to take a summer vacation, and staff members are telling patients that abortion may not be legal by the time he returns. A third is offering only medication abortion.At Planned Parenthood clinics across the country, phone recordings tell callers that abortion remains legal and accessible, but some have stopped scheduling abortions.A banner at the top of the website for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin says: “Our doors are open. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin will continue to help patients get the care they need — including safe and legal abortion. No matter what.” But the organization there decided to stop offering any new appointments for abortion after June 25, anticipating that the court might release its opinion two days later, on its last scheduled decision day. Wisconsin still has an 1849 law on the books criminalizing abortion.Dr. Allie Linton, the organization’s associate medical director, said the decision was in part because of worries that it would be hard to contact patients if their appointments needed to be canceled. She also said the group’s leaders were “cognizant of the significant trauma that might come for patients and staff if we are in the middle of a procedure or the middle of a procedure day, and have to tell patients we cannot provide care.”The Wisconsin clinics have made contingency plans on days this month when the Supreme Court has been expected to issue opinions. Many members of the staff plan to spend the week of June 27 training at new clinics in Illinois, anticipating they may need to relocate so that Wisconsin patients can travel there to obtain care.At Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, which operates clinics in Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Idaho, Indiana and Kentucky, five clinics closed last month as the organization started shuffling resources. Idaho, Indiana and Kentucky are expected to ban most abortions if Roe is overturned, so the organization is trying to expand telemedicine abortion in the remaining states and to help patients get to out-of-state providers.As clinics schedule new patients, they are warning them that the legal status of abortion may be in flux. “Our patient navigators, when they are scheduling, they give patients a heads up and say, ‘Hey, just so you know, there may be a legal change,’” said Katie Rodihan, a spokeswoman for the clinics.Danika Severino Wynn, the vice president for abortion access at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement that local affiliates were independently deciding what to do as the court’s decision nears.“Planned Parenthood affiliates in these states that are extremely hostile to abortion access are being forced to make the difficult decision whether or not to suspend providing abortion services following the court’s decision, due to their state’s legal landscape,” she said. The State of Roe v. WadeCard 1 of 4What is Roe v. Wade?

New research is adding further weight to the argument that prolonged sitting may be hazardous to your health. An international study surveying more than 100,000 individuals in 21 countries found that people who sat for six to eight hours a day had a 12-13 per cent increased risk for early death and heart disease, while those who sat for more than eight hours daily increased that to a sobering 20 per cent.
The study, co-led by Simon Fraser University health sciences professor Scott Lear and Wei Li of Beijing’s Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, is published today in the journal Jama Cardiology. Their research followed individuals over an average of 11 years and determined that high amounts of sitting time were associated with increased risk of early death and cardiovascular disease. While sitting was problematic in all countries, it was especially so in low-income and lower-middle-income countries.
“The overarching message here is to minimize how much you sit,” says Lear. “If you must sit, getting in more exercise during other times of the day will offset that risk.”
Not surprising, those who sat the most and were the least active had the highest risk — up to 50 per cent — while those who sat the most but were also the most active had a substantially lower risk of about 17 per cent.
“For those sitting more than four hours a day, replacing a half hour of sitting with exercise reduced the risk by two per cent,” Lear notes. “With only one in four Canadians meeting the activity guidelines there’s a real opportunity here for people to increase their activity and reduce their chances of early death and heart disease.”
The study found a particular association in lower income countries, leading researchers to speculate that it may be because sitting in higher income countries is typically associated with higher socio-economic status and better paying jobs.
Clinicians should focus on less sitting and more activity as it’s a low-cost intervention that can have enormous benefit, Lear notes.
But while clinicians need to get the message out about countering sitting with activity, individuals need to better assess their lifestyles and take their health seriously, Lear adds. “Our study found that a combination of sitting and inactivity accounted for 8.8 per cent of all deaths, which is close to the contribution of smoking (10.6 per cent in Lear and Li’s study). “It’s a global problem that has a remarkably simple fix. Scheduling time to get out of that chair is a great start.”
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Materials provided by Simon Fraser University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Times readers with babies, toddlers or preschoolers who are unvaccinated against the coronavirus wrote in about worries and strains, loneliness and lost time.Tyfanee Pratt’s son Julian was born in November 2019 in Burlington, N.J. Before long, Ms. Pratt was ready to introduce him to the world. But then, she wrote, “Covid-19 slammed the door on us — locked us in and hid away the key.”Ms. Pratt responded to a call to New York Times readers, asking parents of young children about life with an unvaccinated baby, toddler or preschooler.“His father and I have been his cell mates,” she wrote to The Times, adding that the experience nearly destroyed their relationship.Ms. Pratt is among the estimated one in five parents of children younger than 5 who, according to recent surveys, have been waiting anxiously for the Food and Drug Administration to authorize a coronavirus vaccine for the youngest Americans. That age group, with roughly 20 million children, is the only one not yet eligible for the shots.A committee of experts advising the F.D.A. is scheduled to vote Wednesday on whether to recommend that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines be authorized for young children. If the answer is yes and the rest of the process happens quickly, they could begin getting shots as soon as Tuesday.Most parents are not so eager to get their young children vaccinated, surveys have found. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey this spring found that about two in five parents said they planned to wait and see how the vaccine works for others before deciding what to do. And 38 percent said they would definitely not get their children vaccinated, or would do so only if required.“Because the mortality rate for children is super low, and having already had a bout with Covid omicron version, we should be OK for a while,” a parent in New York City wrote to The Times. “Unless any variant comes up with more dire consequences for those under 5, I would wait until my child turns 5 to vaccinate likely.”Adrian Bryant of Willowbrook, Ill., who has an infant and a 3½-year-old daughter, said she was “not sold” on giving the vaccines to young children, explaining: “My child had Covid twice that I’m aware of, and although she was sick, she did bounce back quickly.”But for parents like Ms. Pratt who do want to vaccinate their children, the wait has been agonizing.More than 1,600 parents responded to The Times’s call in less than 24 hours last month. Their outpouring of thoughts and feelings reflected how they and their children have suffered without access to a pediatric vaccine — emotionally, socially and financially. Here are some of the ways they described the wait: Hell. Brutal. Torture. Terrifying. Horrible. Heartbreaking.“Nearly lost my job and my mind,” wrote one parent. “Halved my income,” said another. “The hardest time in my life.” “I feel helpless and hopeless.” “Extremely lonely; I’m tearing up as I’m writing this.” “Every cough sets me on edge.”“We aren’t making memories.” “My kids are missing out on being kids.” “I’ve been breast feeding for 20 months to give her some immunity.” “It’s like trying to protect them from an avalanche.”Many parents expressed anguish that their children might suffer developmental delays because they have never had a play date or any of the usual contact with children their age.“When my 2.5-year-old had his first friend over to play, he kept touching her to see if she was real,” wrote Lauren Klinger of St. Petersburg, Fla. “It’s soul-crushing.”Angela Smith, a former web designer who founded a nonprofit organization called Pantry Collective, is now a stay-at-home mother of a 2-year-old girl in Colorado Springs. “She doesn’t know all she’s missing out on, and I’m thankful for that,” Ms. Smith wrote. “But I do, and that’s what makes me sad.”Many wrote of how the pandemic had exposed societal divisions, a lack of trust in government and public health, and a lack of empathy for others. One New York City mother wrote that she and her toddler often wait 20 minutes to use their apartment building’s elevator by themselves, rather than risk riding with an unmasked passenger.A parent in Denver wrote: “We are a nation of selfish children, except for the children themselves.”Katie Nelb, an information technology worker and mother of a 3-year-old in McKinney, Texas, wrote: “I have friends and acquaintances who have gotten on planes, gone to events, and wandered through grocery stores either knowingly having Covid or while having symptoms but not wanting to test. And because I know so many people are doing those things while my child has no protection, my family is forced to still live in lockdown after two and a half years.”Alli Chan is a pediatric intensive care nurse in St. Louis. Her husband is an emergency medicine doctor. Their youngest is nearly 3; their 6-year-old has immune deficiencies.She and her husband felt so strongly about protecting their children that they told relatives that they would see them only if they were vaccinated. “We have to protect our children, and if our extended family isn’t willing to do that, then we’ll protect our children from them, too,” she wrote.Kristen Green Wiewora of Searcy, Ark., said that others in her town did not share her worries about the spread of infection in public indoor spaces, making it harder for her to keep her own children, aged 4 and 8, wearing masks.“We are the only ones still masking our unvaccinated child,” she wrote. “I have resorted to paying my children a dollar every time they wear a mask in public indoor places.”Ms. Pratt’s son Julian is now 2½ and curious about everything. She ticked off what he missed as other Americans got vaccinated and returned “to the comfort of familiar routines and everyday freedom”:“He has never even been to a grocery store or a mall,” she wrote. “Never gone trick-or-treating with friends. Never sat on Santa’s lap. Never been to an indoor family gathering. He has yet to meet or spend time with the majority of our friends and family.“We are on the inside, looking out,” she wrote.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men in the United States. Many patients can live long lives due to early detection and treatment with androgen deprivation therapy. However, despite the benefits of this therapy, almost all patients will eventually develop drug resistance and recurrent disease. In a new article published in Science Translational Medicine, Moffitt Cancer Center researchers reveal a mechanism by which prostate cancer cells become resistant through molecular modification of the androgen receptor protein and identify a potential treatment approach that could overcome this resistance.
Androgen deprivation therapy has been the mainstay of prostate cancer treatment for decades. The goal of this therapy is to reduce the levels of hormones called androgens that stimulate prostate cancer cell growth through either surgical or medical approaches that target androgen receptor signaling. Androgen deprivation therapy greatly improves survival, but almost always leads to recurrent disease called castration-resistant prostate cancer. Scientists have discovered that resistance is primarily due to re-activation of androgen receptor signaling through different mechanisms, and they developed new drugs, such as enzalutamide and abiraterone, to overcome this resistance. Unfortunately, patients also eventually develop resistance to these drugs in a relatively short period of time. Several resistance mechanisms to these newer-generation drugs have been identified, but these modifications are not present in all patients, suggesting that additional resistance mechanisms exist.
The Moffitt research team, in collaboration with scientists at Washington University in St. Louis, wanted to identify alternative resistance mechanisms to enzalutamide and abiraterone in prostate cancer patients. They performed a series of laboratory experiments focused on the molecular modifications of the androgen receptor and its interactions with other proteins and DNA. They discovered that the androgen receptor becomes chemically modified at two distinct sites. First, a phosphate group is added to the androgen receptor protein by a protein called ACK1. This chemical modification permits a second modification, during which an acetyl chemical group is added. This modification occurs on a location of the androgen receptor that enables it to become active, even in the presence of enzalutamide. These combined events result in a positive feedback loop during which the androgen receptor further increases levels of itself, as well as the ACK1 protein.
The researchers confirmed the importance of these molecular modifications in mouse experiments. They demonstrated that treatment of enzalutamide/abiraterone-resistant prostate tumors in mice with a Moffitt-designed ACK1 inhibitor called (R)-9b that targets ACK1 suppressed tumor growth, and reduced expression levels of ACK1, the androgen receptor and additional key genes regulated by the androgen receptor. Importantly, the researchers also showed that the expression level of ACK1 and the modified androgen receptor were higher in tissue samples from patients with prostate cancer than normal prostate tissue, and their expression increased throughout cancer progression.
“These combined observations suggest the importance of these androgen receptor modification events and protein interactions to the development of castration-resistant prostate cancer,” said Nicholas Lawrence, Ph.D., study co-author and senior member of the Drug Discovery Department.
“Identification of an ACK1 kinase inhibitor that has the ability to thwart both the modifications, and the fact that an ACK1 inhibitor has not yet advanced to clinical trials, these data could open a new therapeutic modality for recurrent castration-resistant prostate cancer patients, a currently unfulfilled need,” added Harshani Lawrence, Ph.D., study co-author and scientific director of Chemical Biology.
Drs. Nicholas and Harshani Lawrence, both medicinal chemists, are the inventors of (R)-9b.
This study was supported by grants received from the National Institutes of Health (R01CA208258, R01CA227025, R50CA211447), the Prostate Cancer Foundation (17CHAL06) and the Department of Defense (W81XWH-15-1-0059).

Dog-assisted interventions can lead to significantly lower stress in children both with and without special needs, according to a new study using salivary cortisol levels published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Kerstin Meints of University of Lincoln, UK, and colleagues.
Prolonged exposure to stressors can cause adverse effects on learning, behavior, health and wellbeing in children over their lifespan. Several approaches to alleviating stress have been explored in schools including yoga, mindfulness, meditation, physical activity, teaching style interventions and animal-assisted interventions.
In the new study, the researchers tracked levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the saliva of 105 eight- to nine-year-old children in four mainstream schools in the UK as well as 44 similarly aged children from seven special education needs schools in the UK. The children were randomly stratified into three groups: a dog group, relaxation group or control group. In the dog group, participants interacted for 20 minutes with a trained dog and handler; the meditation group involved a 20-minute relaxation session. Sessions were carried out twice a week for four weeks.
Dog interventions lead to significantly lower cortisol levels in children in both mainstream and special needs schools. In mainstream schools, children in the control and relaxation groups had increases in mean salivary cortisol over the course of the school term. However, children who participated in either group or individual sessions with dogs had no statistically significant increase in cortisol. In addition, their cortisol levels were, on average, lower immediately after each dog session. For children with special educational needs, similar patterns were seen, with decreases in cortisol after dog group interventions. The authors conclude that dog interventions can successfully attenuate stress levels in school children but point out that additional research into the ideal amounts of time and contact with dogs for optimal effect is needed.
The authors add: “Dog-assisted interventions can lead to lower stress levels in school children with and without special educational needs”
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The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to concerns for youth mental health and social well-being, including its potential to spur substance use behaviors.
However, research from West Virginia University shows the opposite: youth substance use declined during the pandemic.
Hannah Layman, a social and behavioral sciences doctoral student, and Alfgeir Kristjansson, associate professor in the School of Public Health, examined the prevalence of youth substance use throughout the pandemic by focusing on 49 studies that observed alcohol, cannabis, tobacco and e-cigarette/vaping use.
Because substance use among youth often occurs outside the home environment and within the context of peer groups, teens and children had limited access and opportunities to partake while at home during the pandemic, the study concluded.
“One of the driving factors for youth substance use is access to substances,” Layman said. “With stay-at-home orders, virtual schooling and social distancing, children have been spending more time with family and are more socially isolated from peers than before. Although social isolation from peers may have a negative impact on their mental health, it may just be one of the desirable outcomes of the pandemic when considering substance use in children.”
Layman and Kristjansson said that adolescence is typically the point in a child’s life when peer socialization and the importance of peer respect increases while parental monitoring decreases.

Scientists are increasingly learning of new reasons to appreciate RNA, and the glycolytic enzyme ENO1 seems to have provided yet another in new research from European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) this week, as published in Molecular Cell.
With support from the MOLIT Institute and the Manfred Lautenschläger Foundation, researchers in the Hentze Group at EMBL Heidelberg used mouse embryonic stem cells to discover how messenger RNA molecules bind to and regulate ENO1, an enzyme that breaks down glucose to produce the cellular fuel ATP. This RNA-mediated regulation — riboregulation — can determine how cells grow, and most importantly how undifferentiated cells (specifically embryonic stem cells) transform into specialised cells (e.g., blood, brain, or liver cells).
“Classically, people studying RNA-binding proteins have found that it’s the RNA-binding proteins that do something to RNA to change it during this process, but that’s not really what’s going on here,” said Ina Huppertz, a former postdoc in the Hentze Group and current scientific officer at the European Research Council. “As it turns out, it’s actually the other way around. The hero in this story is the RNA, not the enzymes.”
And while this may sound like a small distinction, this new perspective on riboregulation may represent a more widespread and meaningful principle of biological control.
“This may open up a new chapter of understanding unexpected aspects of controlling metabolism and cell differentiation. There’s every reason to think that this is a ‘tip of the iceberg study’,” said Matthias Hentze, EMBL Director and leader of this study. “The differentiation of undifferentiated cells and controlling that process is one step away from better understanding cancer.”
The researchers’ current work actually began at EMBL about 10 years ago. Hentze’s group developed a technology known as RNA interactome capture (RIC) and later an improved version — enhanced RIC (eRIC) — to discover which proteins bind to RNA, including enzymes like ENO1.
“We felt we should take one of these very concrete examples — ENO1 — and actually pursue it deeply to understand what’s behind this RNA binding,” Hentze explained, noting how technologies developed at EMBL coupled with underlying methodologies developed elsewhere allowed them to now parse out RNA’s role in this process.
“The coolest new concept is how we now have the transcriptome of the whole cell regulating the enzyme,” Huppertz said. “I think we are just at the start. This is really just an example of unravelling the functional connection between these metabolic enzymes and RNA in mammalian cells. But I think we can build on that.”
Hentze too points out that this fundamental research provides many new lines of inquiry that his group will continue to pursue, as will Huppertz in a research group she will lead in the near future. This means answering questions like whether their findings bear out in other enzymes, if they have impacts on other stem cells beyond embryonic stem cells, and whether this protein-RNA interaction is something future drugs might be able to target in the case of cancer cells.
And answering these kinds of scientific questions will require continued intensive collaboration, which Hentze says includes EMBL colleagues and alumni, as well as working with the National Centre for Tumours and the University of Heidelberg’s medical faculty.
In sharing this research, surprises have not only come in the potential change to the way scientists think about RNA’s role in cell differentiation, but also the potential reach of this fundamental research finding.
“After giving a talk, I met a scientist studying Prochlorococcus, a marine cyanobacterium that is the most abundant photosynthetic organism on Earth,” Hentze recounts. “The scientist had reason to believe a lot of regulation happens at the RNA level but didn’t know which proteins in Prochlorococcus bind RNA. So, the technology we’ve developed to identify RNA-binding proteins in an unbiased way has now led to our newest collaboration to help look at RNA regulation in this organism that produces 20 % of the world’s oxygen.”
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Materials provided by European Molecular Biology Laboratory. Original written by Ivy Kupec. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine are conducting a longitudinal study to track neurological symptoms in COVID-19 “long-haulers.”
The first round of results, published June 15, 2022 in Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, revealed the prevalence of various short- and long-term symptoms and found that, while many patients showed improvement, the majority still had some neurological symptoms after six months. A subset of individuals also exhibited significant coordination and cognitive issues, which had not been previously described.
Following mild-to-moderate SARS-CoV-2 infections, 56 persons with neurological symptoms were recruited to the study between October 2020 and October 2021. They completed a neurological exam, cognitive assessment, self-reported questionnaires and an optional brain scan. Baseline measurements were taken a few months after their initial infection and repeated three and six months later.
At the time of their first visit, 89 percent of participants were experiencing fatigue and 80 percent reported headaches. Other common neurological symptoms included memory impairment, insomnia and decreased concentration. Eighty percent of participants said these symptoms impacted their quality of life.
When participants returned for their six-month follow-up, only one-third reported complete resolution of symptoms. The other two-thirds of participants reported persistent neurological symptoms, though most had diminished in severity. The most prevalent symptoms at six months were memory impairment and decreased concentration.
The authors noted that none of the individuals with persistent symptoms at six months had any history of pre-existing neurological conditions prior to their SARS-CoV-2 infections.