The preprint for the article on cognitive decline due to long COVID was shared in the LessWrong Telegram group last October. I looked over it at the time and wrote down some notes, which I will reproduce here. Note I haven’t looked through the final version of the article to check if things still match up.
I skimmed the article a bit, some things I noted: - N=84,285 is the number of people who took the cognitive tests. Only 361 had a positive corona test - In the abstract they say they controlled for age, gender, education level, income, racial-ethnic group and pre-existing medical disorders. In the main text they say they factored out age, sex, handedness, first language, education level, country of residence, occupational status and earnings… And then they did an additional analysis where they also considered pre-existing conditions. - Some to my mind interesting statements from the discussion: ”Previous studies in hospitalised patients with respiratory disease not only demonstrate cognitive deficits, but suggest these remain for some at a 5 year follow-up. Consequently, the observation of post-infection deficits in the subgroup who were put on a ventilator was not surprising. Conversely, the deficits in cases who were not put on a ventilator, particularly those who remained at home, was unexpected. Although these deficits were on average of small scale for those who remained at home, they were more substantial for people who had received positive confirmation of COVID-19 infection.” “… we emphasise that longitudinal research, including follow-up of this cohort, is required to further confirm the cognitive impact of COVID-19 infection...” ”It also is plausible that cognitive deficits associated with COVID-19 are no different to other respiratory illnesses. The observation of significant cognitive deficit associated with positive biological verification of having had COVID-19, i.e., relative to suspected COVID-19, goes some way to mitigate this possibility.”
My personal conclusions and takeaways: - most severe illnesses negatively impact cognitive performance - it is probable that COVID has a neurological component such that the cognitive impact is worse - the worse the symptoms, the worse the effect on cognitive performance --> effects from mild cases may be insignificant - people with a compromised spleen are smarter than average (p>0.05) :D
The preprint for the article on cognitive decline due to long COVID was shared in the LessWrong Telegram group last October. I looked over it at the time and wrote down some notes, which I will reproduce here. Note I haven’t looked through the final version of the article to check if things still match up.