Covid and Dementia

prov1kenobi

My brother became sick from covid in August 2022. He was sick enough to be put into the lical hospital. During his stay, he became very agitated. According to him, the food was terrible, the doctors were crazy, the nurses were awful…..everything there was just terrible. After a few physical and mental evaluations, he was diagnosed with having dementia. Needless to say, it was a shock to all of us. I do need to say, that it has been amost 3 months since all of this happened. My brother has been reevaluated for dementia, and he definitely is “there”. 

My question is ….Does covid 19 exacerbate the developement of dementia ? As I think about this, there were signs before my brother went into the hospital, that he his mental state was changing. But nobody saw it ! He went into the hospital with some symptoms, and came out with obvious dementia.

M1

Hi there, and welcome to the forum.  Yes, sadly, both acutely and chronically covid can exacerbate dementia.  If dementia is present, any acute illness can worsen symptoms, but there are clear studies that have shown that dementia worsens after covid, and there are studies that suggest that having covid is a risk factor for developing dementia even after infection has cleared.   That's very worrisome for public health reasons--think off all the people that have been infected, and we don't know the long-term outcomes.  If even a small percentage of the millions of poeple infected develop dementia, we may have a terrible long-term problem on our hands.

MN Chickadee

Both covid and a hospital stay can exacerbate dementia. There is such a thing called hospital delirium that can send an elderly person into tailspin during hospitalization. Some PWD slowly recover from it, sometimes it sets them back permanently. Covid can also interact with dementia, as can any infection. Covid in particular is known to have negative cognitive effects even in young people. Long Covid can leave people with a brain fog and other issues and studies in the last couple weeks tells us that long covid is quite prevalent. My mother died from complications of covid interacting with Alzheimers. She came through the quarantine fine with minimal symptoms, but it caused the dementia to spiral and the covid seemed to accelerate the final stage of Alz and she just shut down. So in my experience, yes it can really affect the dementia. Your brother may settle down some once he is released or it could be the new normal.