covid 19 and dementia

prov1kenobi

i would like to know if anybody has any thoughts about the relationship  between covid 19 and

dementia. If somebody has dementia, and catches covid 19, has anybody noticed an acceleration of the development of dementia

harshedbuzz

A few folks here have reported it.

I would suspect that with about 25% of those contracting COVID having long COVID brain-fog, it happens.

This isn't what you asked, but I found it alarming.

Is It Long COVID, or Dementia, or Both? (webmd.com)

HB

M1

Short answer is yes, an association has been documented in the peer-reviewed medical literature.

prov1kenobi

I think that my brother showed some signs of dementia back around 2017, give or take a few years. I def noticed some symptoms in august of 2022. Then he caught a severe case of covid and had to go into the hospital. He came out of the hospital 3 days later diagnosed as having Alzheimers. Now it is 6 months later. He is but a shell of what he was when he went into the hospital. 3 Days is all it took ! 3 Days ! This is serious

melange44

Yes! My mother had long term and some short term memory loss due to a TIA a few years back.  She sees a neurologist every 6 months, had extensive testing and was found to have only cognitive decline due to natural aging. She is 83.  Right before Christmas, she contracted Covid. While we were so thankful that it was relatively mild coughing and congestion, we soon discovered after her recovery that she was not the same cognitively at all! She could no longer manage her own medications, starting misplacing things daily, and forgot her basic daily routine. At the end of January, she was diagnosed with moderate dementia. It all happened so fast and it is getting worse.  They have her on Memantine and Aricept now, but I think it is too late.The neurologist also said that he is seeing an acceleration of the decline in his patients who had Covid.

MN Chickadee

My mother was in late stage 6 of Alzheimer's when she got covid and it sped up her progression at lightening speed. You will find on these boards instances of many infections wreaking havoc on dementia. UTIs are a common one but many other things that would normally be handled no problem by the immune system seem to compound dementia symptoms. Covid can also have pretty severe neurological consequences even for non-dementia patients. Many healthy people have brain fog and trouble with processing and complex thinking from long covid. So yes, his condition could definitely be related but it's hard to know for sure what would have happened without the infection. I'm sorry you and your brother are in this position. It has been long enough now since the hospital stay you can rule out hospital delirium or anything else that may ease with time, this is probably his new baseline.