Neuroscientists are proposing that a ‘third wave’ of neurological consequences of COVID-19 may include an increased risk of Parkinson’s disease.
In an article published in the Journal of Parkinson’s Disease, researchers at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in Melbourne say the ever-increasing number of reports of neurological symptoms in patients, from mild (hyposmia) to severe (encephalitis) suggest the potential for neurotropism of SARS-CoV-2.
They are therefore calling for long term monitoring of people who have recovered from COVID-19 infection to look for potential long term neurological effects.
Professor Kevin Barnham and colleagues say there are lessons to be learned from previous viral pandemics and long term neurological outcomes.
“We can take insight from the neurological consequences that followed the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 where the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease increased two to three-fold. Given that the world’s population has been hit again by a viral pandemic, it is very worrying indeed to consider the potential global increase of neurological diseases that could unfold down track,” he said.
And while there is no evidence that viruses are causally linked to parkinsonism, the researchers note there is a hypothesis that “an unknown pathogen” results in a neuronal insult and is the first ‘hit’ in a dual ‘hit’ hypothesis of Parkinson’s disease.
“This hypothesis proposes that there is an initial insult from a neurotropic pathogen that enters the brain through the nasal or gastric pathways and induces long-lived activation of the glial cells that predisposes the brain to oxidative insult in later life,” they write.
“Or alternatively may become primed to react abnormally to stimuli in the aging brain and to become neurotoxic and destructive during neurodegeneration. “