Two teenagers infected with COVID-19 developed severe psychiatric symptoms such as paranoia, delusions, and suicidal thoughts. Now scientists believe the symptoms are caused by ogue antibodies, which may have erroneously attacked the youngsters' brains rather than the coronavirus.
According to a report published in JAMA Neurology on Oct. 25, 18 children and teens were hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19 at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital San Francisco over a five-month period in 2020. They included the three participants in the study who had neurological examinations.
The researchers looked at the patients' cerebrospinal fluid, which was acquired through lumbar puncture, and discovered antibodies indicating that SARS-CoV-2 had infiltrated the central nervous system in two of the patients, both of whom had unspecified depression and/or anxiety.
Antineuronal antibodies were found in the cerebrospinal fluid of the same patients with mild/asymptomatic COVID, as determined by immunostaining brain tissue. This points to an overactive immune system that is wrongly attacking the brain rather than pathogenic microbes.
"It is way too soon to know whether COVID is a common trigger for neuropsychiatric illnesses, but it does seem to be a potent trigger for the development of autoantibodies," co-corresponding author Samuel Pleasure of the UCSF Department of Neurology and of the UCSF Weill Institute said.
"It is currently totally unknown whether patients predisposed to neuropsychiatric illnesses are more likely to develop worsened symptoms after COVID, or whether COVID infection can act as an independent trigger."
COVID-19 may induce the production of brain-targeting autoantibodies, according to the findings of the study. Both of the teens in the study received intravenous immunoglobulin, which is used to effectively reset the immune response in autoimmune and inflammatory illnesses, and their psychiatric problems were either partially or totally resolved as a result.
The study authors had previously published evidence of neural autoantibodies in adult COVID-19 patients prior to their investigation in teenagers. In a study published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine on May 18, these adult patients suffered seizures, loss of smell, and difficult-to-treat headaches, and the majority of them had been hospitalized due to COVID-19's respiratory symptoms.
The virus appears to increase the risk of psychiatric and neurological effects, mounting research suggests.
A study published earlier this year in the U.K. has shown that 34% of approximately 250,000 COVID-19 patients over the age of 10 received a neurological or psychiatric diagnosis in the following six months, with 13% receiving their first such diagnosis.
