The title is misleading, at least on the IQ claim. The underlying study was observational and did not claim causation.<p>Medical journals and their associated media summaries are awash with low-certainty studies that get de-nuanced and overhyped. These studies are relatively easy to do - not to denigrate the work put in by the original study authors (it’s not their fault the press sensationalize their work). But for strong causative claims you ideally would have blinded controlled randomized trials. Sometimes such trials are not feasible, but that doesn’t mean you get to claim causation anyway just because the work to prove it is too hard.
Neuroinflammation is a poorly studied area and one likely cause of brain fog and mecfs/long covid symptoms. Jarred Younger [1] is a researcher studying this and has a youtube channel [2] where he discusses his latest work. If you're interested in this it's worth watching!<p>Also please ignore anyone that posts 'oh its just X' or 'just do X', whatever X may be. This is a complicated medical mystery that millions of patients have suffered from for decades if you include mecfs and postviral conditions. There is no X, patients have tried every possible X. Anyone who tells you its just X is revealing their lack of understanding of the issue (this happens every time this subject shows up on HN and elsewhere).<p>[1] <a href="https://me-pedia.org/wiki/Jarred_Younger" rel="nofollow">https://me-pedia.org/wiki/Jarred_Younger</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoVoOvIX90IMEZCbBf_ycEA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoVoOvIX90IMEZCbBf_ycEA</a>
My wife has postcovid and this is a profound effect. Yesterday she tried to add up a series of numbers by heart, and she simply couldn’t. For context, she’s pretty mathy and used to mock me for taking out a calculator or a spreadsheet for stuff like that. She also forgets everything, which is another thing she used to be great at. It’s pretty confronting, especially now that the idea that maybe this isn’t temporary is taking shape.
2015 observational study suggests these results are not unique to Covid: ""Our research shows a correlation between hospitalisation due to infection and impaired cognition corresponding to an IQ score of 1.76 lower than the average. People with five or more hospital contacts with infections had an IQ score of 9.44 lower than the average. The study thus shows a clear dose-response relationship between the number of infections, and the effect on cognitive ability increased with the temporal proximity of the last infection and with the severity of the infection." Source: <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150521095016.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150521095016.h...</a>
That's not exlusive to covid, but happens with all acute infections. It has long been known that the number of infections correlate with IQ loss.<p>"People with five or more hospital contacts with infections had an IQ score of 9.44 lower than the average."<p><a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150521095016.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150521095016.h...</a>
I had similar symptoms.<p>In my case it was just a vitimin D deficiency caused by working from home.<p>I don't doubt some people have suffered neurological damage, but I wouldn't be surprised if many are suffering the same as I was.
If this is true, you should expect results to be the same across countries, and the measurable drops in IQ should correlate to infection rates.<p>Five bucks says you won't find that.
The cognitive decline can also be attributed to extreme isolation that everyone was subjected to. My super enriched, flow like heavenly water life came to a complete standstill. All future plans and timelines thrown in disarray. Covid has ended but my life trajectory has completely changed
I feel like this is a messaging roll out?<p><a href="https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/faustfiles/109672" rel="nofollow">https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/faustfiles/109672</a> -- an interview from 2 days ago where the NIH leader says covid is persistent for months or years in people and the MD interviewer did a double take.<p>Not sure why there's a shift happening, maybe some new publication? This has been shaping up for years now.
I've noticed my memory and math skills getting worse as well. Can't say it's covid for sure though as there are other likely explanations too: getting fatter and out of shape, finishing uni and going out of practice, long-term sleep deprivation, etc.<p>Either way, if not covid, then I think at least the lockdowns did have an impact on my health and ability to stay fit.
I'm dismayed by the number of people who apparently don't subscribe to evidence-based medicine using proper statistical methodology and instead rely on anecdotal evidence whenever Covid comes up. It's very irrational, though some of this behavior can probably be explained by the extreme politicization of the topic in the US.
The symptoms of tingling in the extremities resemble what my wife experienced after her chemo when the treatment damaged her neurons' myelin sheath. This causes 'noisy' neuron signals to be transmitted (tingles, lack of sensation, etc.).
If the same thing happened in the brain, I bet the noisy signals would lead to brain fogginess, forgetfulness, etc. Back then, she was taking omega-3 supplements and received shots of vitamin B12. After a year, it removed almost all the tingling, but some sensations never fully came back.<p>This is not medical advice (and check with your doctor beforehand), but it feels like taking vitamin B12 and omega-3 supplements should be a pretty low-risk bet to try to improve your situation if you're experiencing the long COVID symptoms described in the article.
I went through a mild COVID-19 infection, and felt the sluggishness in my brain for quite some time. I think I recovered, but it was a jarring experience.
I think I'd attribute my newfound slowness to lockdowns, rather than COVID?<p>Lack of practicing talking and remembering stuff is bad for talking and remembering stuff, and it definitely happened long before I caught COVID, because I caught COVID super late
The studies cited do not prove any causative association. They lack controls and other design elements that would account for misattribution and the impact of COVID-related psychosocial factors on observed symptoms.<p>In general, there is an extreme lack of rigor seen in claims about long COVID. The best evidence available suggests most cases of "long COVID" are misattribution:<p><a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2785832" rel="nofollow">https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...</a>
> There are studies that have been done comparing people who had COVID-19, versus people who didn't, and then gave them cognitive testing to measure their ability to cognitively process information and test their IQ. And there's very clear differences in the IQ of people who had been infected with COVID-19 versus people who did not. Even mild COVID can give people about a three-point loss of IQ.<p>That sounds like an observational study. It's hard to get from that correlation to the causation in the headline. The article does not mention this problem at all as far as I can tell.
I definitely feel 'less sharp' at times, however in my case I may have other factors going on. I did have Omicron and possibly something very weird about the time Covid started to show up in the USA
A Chinese researcher speculated this would be a major source of worldwide cognitive decline. Perhaps the Chinese knew something about the disease we don't leading to their extreme lockdowns.
I'd be interested in if there was a gene that significantly reduced covid infection likelihood - but somehow didn't affect much else, like other viral infection rates.<p>That would almost be a natural sort of experiment, to compare the IQ of these and other population.<p>Though, you would have to have enough people in this group, not be too rare. And it would help if there was already a large population that was IQ measured prior to Covid, and could be re-measured.<p>It seems unlikely that such a scenario exists.
Yet another observational study with no real comparison. The REACT dataset used by the study relies mostly on self reported surveys and data from people sick enough to go to the doctor. This has obvious problems.<p>The idea that there is a control arm of people who haven’t gotten Covid large enough to power a real control here is farcical. Again, a problem of self selection for people committed enough to maintain a large level of isolation for multiple years.<p>Any causal study here should be looking at a differential in pre and post covid cognitive scores with a control of known uninfected participants in the same time window.
I am suffering from LC myself for 2 years now. The Brainfog is intense, the fatigue tiring. I'm mentally really low. It's nice to see some news regarding COVID.<p>My story is on my blog <a href="https://tunn3l.pro" rel="nofollow">https://tunn3l.pro</a>
I had brain fog with COVID but it does get better with time.
Still sometimes struggle to find the right word.
There is also Alzheimer's in my family so that is something additional to worry about
i did pure oxygen in a pressure chamber for about 4 weeks, it got significantly better after that, at least in my perception. Could be also just the time after the infection
A reading of Oliver Sach's pop-sci books on encephalitis & PVS suggests we've actually been here before in the 19th and 20th century with cognitive and other effects down to post viral conditions. It's just another instance of something we probably know happens.
> There are studies that have been done comparing people who had COVID-19, versus people who didn't, and then gave them cognitive testing to measure their ability to cognitively process information and test their IQ. And there's very clear differences in the IQ of people who had been infected with COVID-19 versus people who did not. Even mild COVID can give people about a three-point loss of IQ.<p>Hasn't pretty much the entire population of earth been infected by COVID at least once at this point?
could they express their findings in a way that doesn't include "IQ" in it?<p>I really dont think we know what Intelligence is, let alone how to define it universally enough to make a quotient of it.
My bet is that trolls in government, fake news and anti-scientific facts injected in vein 24/7/365, helped a lot to grease that piggy.<p>Accelerated brain decay with the last and current politics in the planet is basically guaranteed.
I wonder if covid infections, perhaps in rare cases the vaccines themselves, is to blame for the post-pandemic phenomena of ADHD medication shortages, the crime wave, school discipline (lack of), the so-called college enrollment crises (precipitous decline), and record low OECD test scores.All of these can be explained by dopamine dysregulation.
Is there any real world test where higher IQ people do better than anyone else deterministically?<p>I am not talking about correlations.<p>I am talking about people with higher IQ can solve X problem that people with lower IQs can't.<p>Not the ability to spot back & white patterns on a screen.<p>The riches people are not the highest IQ people<p>The Noble Prize Winners are not the highest IQ people<p>The best sports players are not the highest IQ people<p>The best mathematicians are not the highest IQ people<p>The best musicians are not the highest IQ people.<p>None of the these have excellence that can be deterministically determined by IQ. So what exactly is it good for?