Several individuals in Nigeria are experiencing neurological manifestations of neuro-long COVID such as brain fog, mild cognitive impairment, fatigue, sleep problems, headache, sensations of pins and needles, and muscle pain, according to the findings of a study carried out by Nigerian and American scientists.
The collaborative study between Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and researchers from the University of Lagos, Unilag, and the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH, highlights the urgent need for better screening, diagnosis, and treatment of neuro-long COVID-19 in Nigeria.
From the findings published in the Journal of NeuroVirology, of the 2,319 participants in the study, 106 (4.6 percent) had long COVID with neurologic symptoms, some of who were still experiencing symptoms up to two years after their initial episode of COVID-19.
Researchers also found patients hospitalised for COVID-19 pneumonia reported a higher frequency of long COVID symptoms than those who were not hospitalised and had mild initial COVID-19 (11.5 percent vs 3.9 percent, respectively).
The chief of neuro-infectious disease and global neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Dr. Igor Koralnik, led the study.
Dr. Njideka U. Okubadejo, a neurologist, and Dr. Iorhen E. Akase, an infectious disease physician, both from the Unilag and LUTH, were key members of the Nigerian research team that launched the Northwestern Medicine Neuro-COVID-19 Clinic in May 2020.
The team began investigating neurological manifestations of COVID-19 after observing a significant number of patients with post-COVID symptoms.
It was observed that people in Nigeria are unaware that long-COVID is a disease for which symptomatic treatments exist, and there was scarcity of post-COVID clinics at the height of the pandemic.
Koralnik, said, "Based on this data, there is hopefully going to be some intervention to alleviate their suffering. We've determined that even in a resource-limited setting where people have many other problems to worry about, we can still perform these studies, find those patients, and diagnose them.
"This is why we have to start by researching to demonstrate the need for diagnosis and clinical care of these patients and advocate for specialized outpatient clinics. If you don't know that something exists, you can't treat it," Koralnik said.
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Predominant neurologic symptoms among study participants included brain fog (59.4 percent); fatigue (55.7 percent); sleep problems (32 percent), headache (31 percent); paresthesia, or numbness and pins and needles (11.3 percent), and myalgia, or muscle pain (9.4 percent).
Of the 66 participants with neuro-long COVID who underwent an in-person neurological evaluation and cognitive screening, 16.9 percent completed the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a widely used cognitive impairment screening assessment that had results consistent with mild cognitive impairment.
In the future, the scientists plan to treat brain fog and cognitive dysfunction in neuro-long COVID patients in Nigeria by applying the same techniques he and his team are currently using in Chicago, Koralnik said. Long COVID principally affects adults in their prime, affecting their quality of life and ability to work, contributing to profound public health and socio-economic impacts.
