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. 2022 Nov:317:114836.
doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2022.114836. Epub 2022 Sep 6.

Larger gray matter volumes in neuropsychiatric long-COVID syndrome

Bianca Besteher  1 , Marlene Machnik  2 , Marie Troll  2 , Antonia Toepffer  2 , Ani Zerekidze  2 , Tonia Rocktäschel  2 , Carina Heller  3 , Zora Kikinis  4 , Stefan Brodoehl  5 , Kathrin Finke  5 , Philipp A Reuken  6 , Nils Opel  2 , Andreas Stallmach  6 , Christian Gaser  7 , Martin Walter  2
Affiliations

Larger gray matter volumes in neuropsychiatric long-COVID syndrome

Bianca Besteher et al. Psychiatry Res. 2022 Nov.

Abstract

Neuropsychiatric symptoms are the most common sequelae of long-COVID. As accumulating evidence suggests an impact of survived SARS-CoV-2-infection on brain physiology, it is necessary to further investigate brain structural changes in relation to course and neuropsychiatric symptom burden in long-COVID. To this end, the present study investigated 3T-MRI scans from long-COVID patients suffering from neuropsychiatric symptoms (n = 30), and healthy controls (n = 20). Whole-brain comparison of gray matter volume (GMV) was conducted by voxel-based morphometry. To determine whether changes in GMV are predicted by neuropsychiatric symptom burden and/or initial severity of symptoms of COVID-19 and time since onset of COVID-19 stepwise linear regression analysis was performed. Significantly enlarged GMV in long-COVID patients was present in several clusters (spanning fronto-temporal areas, insula, hippocampus, amygdala, basal ganglia, and thalamus in both hemispheres) when compared to controls. Time since onset of COVID-19 was a significant regressor in four of these clusters with an inverse relationship. No associations with clinical symptom burden were found. GMV alterations in limbic and secondary olfactory areas are present in long-COVID patients and might be dynamic over time. Larger samples and longitudinal data in long-COVID patients are required to further clarify the mediating mechanisms between COVID-19, GMV and neuropsychiatric symptoms.

Keywords: COVID-19; Long-COVID; Neuroimaging; VBM.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest Outside of the study, PAR received consulting and lecture fees from CSL Behring, Dr. Wilmar Schwabe, Boston Scientific, Pfizer, Bristol Myers Squibb and travel grants from Merz Pharma. All other authors state, that they have no conflict of interests.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig. 1
Larger Gray Matter Volumes in Patients with long-COVID Compared to Controls, (A) Results of GMV comparison (p<0.05, FWE-corrected) between long-COVID patients and healthy controls are presented as overlays. Color bar represents TFCE-value.
Fig 2
Fig. 2
Time elapsed since COVID-19 is a significant regressor of GMV values in long-COVID patients, Four clusters of larger gray matter volume predicted by time since onset of COVID-19 (A-D), cluster peak is marked by crosshairs. Color bar represents TFCE-value. Scatter plots show the association of adjusted value of peak voxel with time since onset of COVID-19 in each participant of respective cluster.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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