Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19 • Hacker News Board

Re: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19

#121

Post by jrumbut » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

srtjstjsj wrote: post #59

shultays wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

symptoms of illness is the illness itself. Ignoring these symptoms of covid or results of the treatment is saying something like "bullets don't kill people, it ruptures blood vessels and you die due to loss of blood"

You misunderstand the ambiguous wording. If you study only includes people with an illness, the illness itself is a confounder. The point is that if you have a non-ICU covid case, this research is unlikely to apply.

It feels like we didn't read the same article, they break down numbers for people on ventilators but also hospitalized, non-ventilator patients all the way down to those who received no particular care.

The findings were concerning to anyone who had it, they also mention cases where the cognitive deficit was the first reported symptom.

Re: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19

#122

Post by irq11 » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 2:39 PM UTC

rfrey wrote: post #84

ghufran_syed wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted - here’s a page about post-intensive care syndrome, on the website of the society for critical care medicine, that’s concordant with what you said: https://www.sccm.org/MyICUCare/THRIVE/Post-intensive-Care-Sy...

Possibly for what HN calls "middlebrow dismissal" - wandering in and dismissing the article with blindingly obvious issues ("probably caused by the sedatives, immobilization" etc) as if professional medical researchers wouldn't have thought of them. They plainly need a clear-eyed HN reader on staff to help them.

A bigger problem on HN these days is the highbrow lowbrow dismissal, wherein people come up with fancy-sounding reasons for rejecting comments, that are actually themselves lazy/incorrect arguments.

For example: when the paper itself says that the cognitive declines seen in people who don’t spend time hospitalized are a small fraction of the magnitude of the cognitive declines seen in hospitalized patients (Figures 2, 3; in some cases a cognitive benefit is seen in mild cases), yet a comment observing that the effects are confined to a small population is dismissed for the reason that “professional medical researchers would have thought of that”.

Re: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19

#123

Post by jquery » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 2:40 PM UTC

neuronic wrote: post #34

fogihujy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the fact that someone was uable to breathe on their own also suggests that the virus may have caused a lack of oxygen to the brain. In such circumstances brain damage is quite likely, and then the disease would indeed be the cause. Fortunately, the group of people that end up on ventilators is not really that large, and I can imagine minor brain damage would still be preferable to death in many of those cases.…

People are unable to worry about or comprehend the effects that happen right NOW. I am a staunch believer in post-viral syndrome as I experienced it first hand following an Epstein-Barr infection (mono) but aside from a handful of researchers nobody cares at all. For most physicians, it isn't even within the realm of possibilities when you come to them with random maladies. Boom, now you have anxiety because that's w…

> staunch believer in post-viral syndrome

+1

The last time I had a serious viral infection, I began having panic attacks and severe anxiety with mental fog, which didn’t go away when all the other symptoms did. My wife said I had “changed”.

When I tell doctors, they just kind of shrug. It sucks that it’s not taken seriously. I hope COVID-19 leads to more awareness of post-viral syndrome. Before Covid-19, we were all too cavalier about getting sick or getting other people sick.

Re: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19

#124

Post by wombatmobile » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

cltby wrote: post #111

kasperni wrote: post #2

From the conclusion: "The scale of the observed deficits was not insubstantial; the 0.57 SD global composite score reduction for the hospitalised with ventilator sub-group was equivalent to the average 10-year decline in global performance between the ages of 20 to 70 within this dataset. It was larger than the mean deficit of 512 people who indicated they had previously suffered a stroke (-0.40SDs) and the 1016 who…

I'm certainly not accusing you of this personally, but it's curious how selectively IQ is accepted/denied on this site. It's real enough for the purposes of covid policy, lead abatement, or whatever other fashionable environmental intervention. In just about every other case, flat out denialism.

Could you say what you understand IQ is a measure of, citby?

Re: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19

#125

Post by justnotworthit » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 2:42 PM UTC

dempseye wrote: post #46

minitech wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“not in substantial” :)

This is a very English way of expressing oneself.

The "not un" has a long history of debate amongst stylists. I believe it's easily overused because it has certain air of erudition about it. However, sometimes "not un" is straightforward and clearer than the alternatives. In this context... well.. science journals have their own English journalese that lives outside general usage.

Re: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19

#126

Post by dhimes » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

fasteo wrote: post #105

simonh wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure as you say critical illness with long term medical effects is known to have this impact. The difference is that, as the abstract points out, substantial cognitive impairment in Covid patients was found even in people who displayed mild symptoms and were never critically ill.

Fair point. I missed that part. Thanks. Now we should also research if viral infections in general have an association to cognitive deficit. I guess this will be the case.

I haven't heard of it with the flu.

Re: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19

#127

Post by usrusr » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #90

kasperni wrote: post #2

From the conclusion: "The scale of the observed deficits was not insubstantial; the 0.57 SD global composite score reduction for the hospitalised with ventilator sub-group was equivalent to the average 10-year decline in global performance between the ages of 20 to 70 within this dataset. It was larger than the mean deficit of 512 people who indicated they had previously suffered a stroke (-0.40SDs) and the 1016 who…

I’d be curious to see this compared to people hospitalized on ventilators for other diseases. You’re not in good shape at that point and I’d expect all kinds of problems.

Does it matter though? The answer certainly depends on the context of the question: do we just want to assess the risks more precisely than the dead/alive boolean? No, it doesn't matter. Do we want to increase humanity's knowledge about how the virus affects our bodies? Yes, absolutely, if it's worse than standard damage of respirator episodes we'll want to know the "mechanisms" that we causing that extra damage.

Re: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19

#128

Post by DennisP » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 2:52 PM UTC

fasteo wrote: post #105

simonh wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure as you say critical illness with long term medical effects is known to have this impact. The difference is that, as the abstract points out, substantial cognitive impairment in Covid patients was found even in people who displayed mild symptoms and were never critically ill.

Fair point. I missed that part. Thanks. Now we should also research if viral infections in general have an association to cognitive deficit. I guess this will be the case.

I would be quite surprised if a cold or mild flu caused a cognitive deficit equivalent to ten years of aging, persisting after recovery.

Re: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19

#129

Post by simonh » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 2:54 PM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #128

fasteo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point. I missed that part. Thanks. Now we should also research if viral infections in general have an association to cognitive deficit. I guess this will be the case.

I would be quite surprised if a cold or mild flu caused a cognitive deficit equivalent to ten years of aging, persisting after recovery.

The impact on non critical patients wasn’t as bad as that, but more than half as severe. Even so, if that were the case for mild viral infections I’d be a vegetable by now.

Re: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19

#130

Post by monadic2 » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #128

fasteo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point. I missed that part. Thanks. Now we should also research if viral infections in general have an association to cognitive deficit. I guess this will be the case.

I would be quite surprised if a cold or mild flu caused a cognitive deficit equivalent to ten years of aging, persisting after recovery.

Depends on the claimed rate!