Older Adults Infected By COVID-19 Are 50% To 80% More Likely To Develop Alzheimer’s Disease One Year After Infection, New Study Finds
According to the CDC, 5.8 million people in the United States are currently living with Alzheimer’s disease.
However, according to a new study conducted by Case Western Reserve University, adults’ risk for developing this type of dementia may have just multiplied due to COVID-19.
In fact, the researchers found that older adults who had been infected with the virus were fifty to eighty percent more likely to develop Alzheimer’s within one year.
The team first launched this study because two key factors that play a role in the development of the disease include inflammation and prior infections– particularly viral infections.
“And since infection with SARS-CoV-2 has been associated with central nervous system abnormalities including inflammation, we wanted to test whether, even in the short term, COVID could lead to increased diagnoses,” explained Pamela Davis, the study’s co-author.
So, the research team anonymously analyzed the health records of 6.2 million adults over the age of sixty-five. These patients all received medical treatment between February 2020 and May 2021. Moreover, they did not have a prior diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.
Next, the adults were divided into two groups. The first contained people who did not contract COVID-19 during that period, and the second contained people who did.
Over four hundred thousand people wound up in the COVID-19 group, while 5.8 million people were put in the control– or non-infected– group.
And sadly, the team found that the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease in older adults practically doubled within a one-year period of contracting COVID-19.
fizkes – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purpose only, not the actual person
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The reason why is still unclear, though. The researchers are uncertain if COVID-19 infection actually spurs Alzheimer’s disease to develop or if the virus simply accelerates the disease’s emergence.
Regardless, the implications such a relationship would have on both patient care and medical professions could be damning, according to Davis.
“If this increase in new diagnoses of Alzheimer’s disease is sustained, the wave of patients with a disease currently without a cure will be substantial and could further strain our long-term care resources,” Davis said.
So, even though numerous general risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease have been reduced among U.S. adults– including heart disease, hypertension, and obesity– medical professionals will have to monitor trends and pay close attention to COVID-19 medical history.
The research team now also plans to dive deeper into the effects of COVID-19 on Alzheimer’s disease, as well as other neurodegenerative disorders, with hopes of potentially repurposing FDA-approved drugs to battle long-term COVID effects.
To read the study’s complete findings, which have since been published in Alzheimer’s Disease, visit the link here.
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