Neurological symptoms are common even after ‘mild’ COVID-19. Using a mouse model of SARS-CoV-2 infection limited to the respiratory tract, this study shows that even after viral clearance, there is prolonged microglial reactivity in subcortical and hippocampal white matter and increased levels of CCL11 in the cerebrospinal fluid. Loss of myelin-forming oligodendrocytes and reduced hippocampal neurogenesis were also observed. CCL11 administration in mice causes hippocampal microglial reactivity and impaired hippocampal neurogenesis. Increased plasma levels of CCL11 were also observed in patients with Long COVID with cognitive symptoms, and white matter microglial reactivity was observed in patients who died while infected with SARS-CoV-2 without severe COVID-19. Influenza A virus infection also resulted in neuroinflammation but without the prolonged effects on subcortical white matter.
Authors: Anthony Fernández-Castañeda; Peiwen Lu; Anna C Geraghty; Eric Song; Myoung-Hwa Lee; Jamie Wood; Michael R O'Dea; Selena Dutton; Kiarash Shamardani; Kamsi Nwangwu; Rebecca Mancusi; Belgin Yalçın; Kathryn R Taylor; Lehi Acosta-Alvarez; Karen Malacon; Michael B Keough; Lijun Ni; Pamelyn J Woo; Daniel Contreras-Esquivel; Angus Martin Shaw Toland; Jeff R Gehlhausen; Jon Klein; Takehiro Takahashi; Julio Silva; Benjamin Israelow; Carolina Lucas; Tianyang Mao; Mario A Peña-Hernández; Alexandra Tabachnikova; Robert J Homer; Laura Tabacof; Jenna Tosto-Mancuso; Erica Breyman; Amy Kontorovich; Dayna McCarthy; Martha Quezado; Hannes Vogel; Marco M Hefti; Daniel P Perl; Shane Liddelow; Rebecca Folkerth; David Putrino; Avindra Nath; Akiko Iwasaki; Michelle Monje Journal: Cell Date: 2022-06-13 Impact factor: 66.850